Storm Leaves Over a Million Without Power as 10,000 Flights Are Canceled

More than a million customers lost electricity across the South on Sunday as ice from a sprawling winter storm brought down trees and power lines, and airlines canceled more than 10,000 flights, the most in a single day since the early months of the pandemic. The storm, which began Saturday, was forecast to continue into the week across the eastern two-thirds of the country.

According to PowerOutage.us, 1,005,641 customers were without power as of 2:14 p.m. Eastern time, Al Jazeera reported, with most of the outages in Tennessee and others in Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia and Alabama. NBC News’s live coverage reported 1,018,477 at 2:55 p.m., with more than 860,000 still out at 8:56 p.m. Tennessee had about 285,000 customers out, Mississippi about 155,000 and Louisiana about 128,000. Nashville Electric Service said outages could last “days or longer,” and a Mississippi utility near the Tennessee border said restoration could take weeks, NBC News reported. Texas had about 100,000 customers out at midday, NBC News said.

Air travel was badly disrupted. FlightAware counted more than 10,000 cancellations on Sunday and about 8,000 delays, according to Al Jazeera. NBC News, citing FlightAware, reported more than 11,800 flights canceled by 4:36 p.m. Eastern, the most since March 27, 2020, with Atlanta, Charlotte and Dallas-Fort Worth the hardest hit. Reagan Washington National Airport canceled all flights, and LaGuardia Airport closed, NBC News reported.

The federal government has leaned on emergency powers. President Donald Trump approved federal emergency disaster declarations on Saturday, and nearly 20 states and the District of Columbia had declared weather emergencies, Al Jazeera reported. NBC News counted at least 23 states with emergencies. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Federal Emergency Management Agency had pre-positioned commodities, staff and search-and-rescue teams in numerous states, according to Al Jazeera.

The Energy Department also issued emergency orders to keep the lights on. Al Jazeera said an order on Sunday allowed the mid-Atlantic grid operator PJM Interconnection to run “specified resources” regardless of certain legal and environmental limits. NBC News reported that a separate Saturday order allowed ERCOT, the Texas grid operator, to deploy backup generation at data centers and other large facilities.

The weather itself was extreme. About 213 million people were under some form of winter weather warning, National Weather Service meteorologist Allison Santorelli told Al Jazeera, and the affected area stretched roughly 2,000 miles from New Mexico and Texas to New England. NBC News reported about 185 million people under alerts, with wind chills in the minus 20s and minus 30s in some places and upstate New York recording minus 49 degrees in Copenhagen, according to Gov. Kathy Hochul. Central Park had 8.8 inches of snow by 4:15 p.m., the largest storm in New York City since 2021, and the National Weather Service raised its Boston forecast to 23 inches.

Local officials in Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas and Kansas attributed at least seven deaths to the storm, NBC News reported. New York City officials said five people died over the weekend, but did not say whether the deaths were weather-related.

Authorities warned that the danger would not end with the snow. Al Jazeera reported that life-threatening cold was expected to last about a week, especially in the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest, with wind chills forecast below minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit. New York City’s public schools were closed for Monday with remote learning, and about 2,000 sanitation workers were deployed in 12-hour shifts, according to NBC News.