600,000 Without Power as Extreme Cold Temperatures Affect Much of the US

Nearly 600,000 customers were without power on the evening of Jan. 26 after a widespread, long-lasting winter storm spread ice and snow across the country, as tens of millions of people were under some form of cold weather warning or advisory.

A map on tracking website PowerOutage.us shows that nearly 600,000 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 the evening of Jan. 26 was Tennessee, which had nearly 200,000 outages, while Mississippi had more than 140,000 and Louisiana more than 100,000.

The region received heavy sleet and freezing rain during the storm, with images and video footage captured by popular 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 two feet of snow, there were few outages reported in the region, according to the PowerOutage.us map.

More than 4,800 flights have been canceled within, into, or out of the United States on the morning of Jan. 26, according to tracking website FlightAware. The site also shows more than 2,400 delays.

Meanwhile, bitter cold followed in the storm’s wake. As of the morning of Jan. 26, 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, affecting 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 National Weather Service said on its website.

“Sub-zero lows are expected nearly every morning from the Northern Plains through the Ohio Valley and into the Northeast.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul warned that harsh cold in parts of her 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 the morning of Jan. 25, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, authorities said. Some 12,000 flights were canceled on Jan. 25, 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 about 12 states because of the weather, including North Carolina, Maryland, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, West Virginia, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia.

In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people who died were found outside as temperatures plunged on Jan. 24, although 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.