By Jack Phillips
Contributing Writer
Nearly 800,000 customers were without power on Monday after a widespread, long-lasting winter storm spread ice and snow across the country, as tens of millions were under some form of cold-weather warning or advisory.
A map on tracking website Poweroutage.us showed that around 775,000 people were without power in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. The worst-affected state as of Monday morning was Tennessee, which had 250,000 outages, but Louisiana and Mississippi had well over 100,000 apiece.
The region received heavy sleet and freezing rain during the storm, with images and video footage captured by storm chaser Reed Timmer showing a thick layer of ice covering most surfaces in Oxford, Mississippi, and numerous compromised and downed trees. A thick layer of ice could also be seen on power lines in the footage.
Although some areas in the northeastern United States received nearly 2 feet of snow, there were few outages reported in the region, according to the Poweroutage.us map.
More than 4,800 flights were canceled within, into, or out of the United States on Monday morning, according to tracking website FlightAware. The site also showed more than 2,400 delays.
Meanwhile, bitter cold followed in the storm’s wake. As of Monday morning, the National Weather Service had imposed extreme cold warnings or cold weather advisories across most of the Plains, South, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast regions, impacting tens of millions of people.
“Frigid temperatures will impact the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. this week, and numerous record lows are forecast,” the NWS said on its website.
“Sub-zero lows are expected nearly every morning from the Northern Plains through the Ohio Valley and into the Northeast.”
In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul warned that harsh cold in parts of the state will produce “brutal” and “dangerous” impacts.
“We are anticipating the longest cold stretch and the highest snow totals the state has seen in several years,” she said.
At one point on Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, authorities said. Some 12,000 flights were canceled on Sunday, and nearly 20,000 were delayed as more than 1 million people were without power at one point.
The Department of Energy issued two emergency orders to shore up security around power production amid the storm, including one to bolster resources for Texas and another to provide resources to PJM Interconnection, which provides power to a number of East Coast states.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump signed emergency declarations for a dozen states due to the weather, including North Carolina, Maryland, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, West Virginia, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia.
In New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people who died were found outside as temperatures plunged Saturday, though the cause of their deaths remained under investigation. Two men died of hypothermia related to the storm in Caddo Parish in Louisiana, according to the state health department. There were reports of deaths in other states due to the storm.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
