Monster Winter Storm Cuts Power To Over 1 Million Across US, Cancels 10,000 Flights; Braces For Prolonged Cold And Infrastructure Threats

A massive winter storm swept across much of the United States on Sunday, leaving more than 1 million people without power and disrupting travel nationwide. Heavy snow, ice, sleet, and dangerously cold temperatures hit eastern and southern states, with Tennessee experiencing over 330,000 outages and Mississippi and Louisiana each seeing more than 100,000 customers affected.

Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, West Virginia, and Alabama also faced widespread electricity disruptions. The storm caused severe travel chaos, leading to the cancellation of over 10,000 flights as authorities warned residents to stay off the roads.

More than 10,800 U.S. flights scheduled for Sunday were canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Over 4,000 flights were canceled on Saturday.

Washington, D.C.’s Ronald Reagan National Airport said airlines had canceled all flights at the airport on Sunday. FlightAware data indicated that more than 80% of Sunday flights were canceled for several airports in large metropolitan regions, including New York, Philadelphia and Charlotte, N.C.

Delta Air Lines DAL.N on Sunday said that it intended to operate on a reduced schedule “subject to real-time frozen precipitation and afternoon storm conditions.”

The airline had adjusted its schedule on Saturday, with additional cancellations in the morning for Atlanta and along the East Coast, including in Boston and New York City, and said it would move experts from cold-weather hubs to support de-icing and baggage teams at several southern airports.

The National Weather Service’s latest forecast for Sunday through Monday morning calls for heavy snow from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, including up to 18 inches in New England. Much of the Southeast and parts of the Mid-Atlantic are expected to get rain and freezing rain.

Forecasters predicted “bitterly cold temperatures and dangerously cold wind chills” from the southern plains to the Northeast in the wake of the storm, bringing “prolonged hazardous travel and infrastructure impacts.”

FEDERAL, STATE GOVERNMENTS DECLARE EMERGENCIES

Calling the storms “historic,” President Donald Trump on Saturday approved federal emergency disaster declarations in South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, and West Virginia.

Seventeen states and the District of Columbia declared weather emergencies on Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security said.

Power lines could be particularly vulnerable because of the potential for ice, officials said.

“The situation with this storm is pretty unique, just because it’s going to stay cold for a period of time,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on the “Fox News Sunday Briefing” program. “This ice that has fallen will keep those lines heavy, even if they haven’t gone down immediately.”

The Department of Energy on Saturday issued an emergency order authorizing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to deploy backup generation resources at data centers and other major facilities, aiming to limit blackouts in the state.

On Sunday, the DOE issued an emergency order to authorize grid operator PJM Interconnection to run “specified resources” in the mid-Atlantic region, regardless of limits due to state laws or environmental permits.

U.S. electric grid operators on Saturday stepped up precautions to avoid rotating blackouts.

Dominion Energy D.N, whose Virginia operations include the largest collection of data centers in the world, said if its ice forecast held, the winter event could be among the largest to affect the company.

(With Reuters Inputs)

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