how do you write a news report on the topic "storm shuts down region"??
The first sentence or two must have the five W's -- who, what, when, where, why -- and maybe how.
The rest of the report gives the details.
so can my lead sentence be " on january 27 2012 a major ice storm shut down the whole region of ..." ??
Yes.
However, since the date isn't as important as the storm, you should put the date later in the sentence.