USPS said it is suspending its service guarantee for all Priority Mail Express shipments citing major winter weather impacts across the country. The Priority Mail Express service guarantee will temporarily be suspended effective 00:01 EST Friday January 23, 2026, through 00:01 EST Monday January 26, 2026.
USPS is also suspending shipments of Lives (birds, insects, etc.) nationwide, regardless of air or ground transportation, citing Winter Storm Fern:
“The storm is expected to bring extreme Arctic Vortex type temperatures that will put the Lives at risk. Surface transportation will be impacted due to snow and ice accumulation on the roads from Texas to the Northeast.
“Therefore, our transport contract will be closed for Lives beginning Friday evening January 23, 2026, and we plan to resume accepting Lives Monday evening January 26, 2026, based on expected impacts at this time.”
According to Weather.com on Thursday, Winter Storm Fern is gearing up to make a cross-country trek late this week and into the weekend, bringing winter weather impacts to over half of the country’s population (“Massive Winter Storm With Damaging Ice In South, Heavy Snow From Texas To Northeast To Affect Over 230 Million”).
FedEx also has an advisory on its service alerts portal, displaying the following message:
Winter Storm Advisory
We are closely monitoring winter storms moving across the United States and have contingency plans in place to keep our team members safe and help lessen any impact on service. Delays and disruptions could be possible for inbound and outbound shipments in the affected areas due to local conditions and restrictions.
For specific shipment status information, please track your shipment at fedex.com. Residential recipients can enroll in FedEx Delivery Manager to stay informed of their shipment’s progress.
Please continue to check this page for updated information.
Last updated January 22, 2026
On Thursday, Amazon sellers began discussing strategies to mitigate the delays they expected to experience in getting shipments into the hands of carriers in a thread titled “Winter Storm affecting 35 states.” One seller wondered if colleagues planned to go into vacation mode. Another seller suggested using a holiday feature, sharing the following:
“A better bet is to use the new Custom Holiday feature which will allow you to add a non-shipping day, but keep the store open.
“And I HIGHLY suggest doing this, especially if you have one day shipping. You don’t want to have to go out in bad weather to get a weekend’s worth of product out.
“As for Amazon, sometimes they give an exception, but often do not; even in events with far less notice than this. I would not assume that they will in this case.”
Another seller discussed the impact on deliveries, writing the following:
“Other problem is going to be delivery, things going out this week to those states in the winter weather are going to see bigtime arrival delays, and yet Amazon will still stick it to sellers in the stupid ODR metric…they don’t conform to these issues at all, their delivery window is not long enough anymore with the way USPS works,,,, and when it comes to events like this they just keep blaming and grading the seller for it. Its ridiculous.”
Sellers also discussed the impact of the storm on seller performance metrics on the eBay discussion boards, with the original poster offering the following advice to fellow sellers:
“I just wanted to remind everyone who is putting their store on vacation mode during this storm. Do not send out offers. Offers are not included in the vacation mode and you will still be required to send out on time. Offers last for 4 days.”
Etsy sellers may also be discussing the storm on the forums, which are accessible only to sellers.
