The January 2017 ice storm

What happened

Arctic air had settled east of the Cascades and in the Gorge. On January 16 the approaching storm drove east winds through the Gorge, gusting to 85 mph at Corbett. When a plume of Pacific moisture arrived on the 17th, warmer air slid over the cold layer and the rain froze on contact.

The Gorge got the worst of it. NOAA’s Portland office called it devastating, with 1 to 2 inches of ice and up to 2 inches at Hood River. SR 14 closed for a day and I-84 for most of three. Ice reached an inch at Troutdale and 0.65 inch at the Portland airport, though most of the Portland and Vancouver area saw less than a third of an inch.

Across eastern Washington, freezing rain left a quarter to six-tenths of an inch of ice from Moses Lake, Soap Lake and Ephrata to Waterville and Spokane, then turned to snow. State patrol handled more than 100 crashes, and more than 50 school districts closed or opened late on the 18th. Sleet and freezing rain piled up at Snoqualmie Pass and brought slides of snow and trees across I-90, and in southeast Oregon more than a foot of snow fell around Ontario and Nyssa.

The storm in NOAA’s numbers

NOAA’s Storm Events Database files this storm as 11 episodes from the National Weather Service offices in Boise (BOI), Medford (MFR), Spokane (OTX), Pendleton (PDT), Portland (PQR) and Seattle (SEW), dated January 16–18, 2017. Counting the six tree-relevant report types (high wind, strong wind, thunderstorm wind, ice storm, winter storm and heavy snow), the episodes hold 86 reports: 17 high wind, 34 ice storm, 12 winter storm and 23 heavy snow (24 in Oregon; 62 in Washington). The same episodes hold 1 other report (blizzard 1), which are not counted in that total. The highest gust among the wind reports is 77 knots (about 89 mph), measured, in NOAA’s Siskiyou Mountains and Southern Oregon Cascades forecast zone in Oregon. 1 report in these episodes appears to carry the gust in mph in NOAA’s knots field (the narrative quotes the same number in mph), so it is converted here. Of the counted reports, 1 mentions trees in the narrative.

A report is one entry per forecast zone or county per event, so one storm crossing many zones produces many reports. Gusts are in knots as NOAA records them (1 kt is about 1.15 mph).

Affected counties

62 counties have at least one counted report (34 in Oregon; 28 in Washington). The most reports touched Okanogan County, WA (20), Spokane County, WA (14) and Douglas County, WA (13). Most wind, ice and snow reports are filed by forecast zone, and a zone report is assigned here to every county that zone covers, so a county’s number is the reports that touched it, not separate incidents.

Damage, deaths and injuries

NOAA’s property damage field for these episodes adds up to $100.2 million in nominal dollars, as entered by the NWS offices at the time and not adjusted for inflation. The event records list no deaths or injuries across these episodes.

Nearly all of the $100.2 million is one $100 million estimate for the lower Treasure Valley around Ontario, where heavy snow damaged farm buildings storing produce. Wind and ice reports add about $188,000, including $138,000 where Grays Harbor PUD lost transmission poles. NOAA records no deaths or injuries for these episodes.

What it meant for trees

Only 1 report in this storm mentions trees, the slides across I-90, because the narratives focus on roads and closures. That is a gap in the written record, not a sign that trees came through unharmed. Wind was part of it too: Grays Harbor PUD lost eight transmission poles along SR 105, and Ferndale gusted to 75 mph.

Ice storms keep coming back to the Gorge because the terrain that funnels east winds also traps cold air at the surface. The February 2021, December 2022 and January 2024 storms all brought ice there again. From Troutdale and Hood River to the Washington side between Washougal and White Salmon, ice loading is a routine hazard for yard trees.

What homeowners can learn from it

• In or near the Gorge, prune for ice. Remove deadwood, thin dense crowns and deal with weak forks before December; see crown thinning and reduction.
• Expect a wait when the highways close. With I-84 and SR 14 shut, crews and equipment cannot get in quickly, so plan for days rather than hours before a tree off the house can be cleared.
• Photograph before anything is moved. Pictures of the tree, the stump or root plate and the damage are the evidence an insurer will want; storm damage and tree insurance in Oregon and storm damage and tree insurance in Washington explain what policies usually cover.
• If a tree is on the house, a car or a line, get people out of reach first. Then call the utility for anything touching wires; emergency tree service and fallen tree removal cover what happens next, and tree work safety explains why a crew should handle trees under tension.

Local pages: The Dalles, Troutdale, emergency tree service in Spokane and Moses Lake. Before the next storm season, the tree risk checklist walks you around your own trees, and Oregon storm records and Washington storm records put this storm in context.

How this page was built

Every number above is computed from NOAA’s Storm Events bulk files for episodes 113135, 113136, 113205, 112715, 113206, 113137, 113138, 113161, 113239, 112043, 113426. Episodes were chosen by ranking all Washington and Oregon episodes from 2016 to mid-2026 on tree-relevant report counts, property damage and tree mentions, and episodes from different offices or states were merged when their narratives describe the same system on the same dates. This page merges 11 NOAA episodes from five forecast offices that describe the same atmospheric river and arctic air on January 16 to 18. Heavy snow reports, mostly from north-central and northeast Washington mountains and valleys, make up 23 of the 86; mountain snow rarely damages yard trees. Damage figures are NOAA’s nominal-dollar estimates and are often blank. See all storms on the storm history index and the site’s methodology.