More than 850,000 people in the United States were left without electricity and more than 10,000 flights were canceled on Sunday during a monstrous winter storm that paralyzed eastern and southern states with heavy snow and ice.
While snow, freezing rain, and dangerously low temperatures swept across the eastern two-thirds of the country on Sunday, the number of power outages continued to rise. By late Sunday morning, more than 850,000 U.S. customers were without power, according to the PowerOutage.us website, with at least 290,000 in Tennessee and more than 100,000 each in Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana. Other affected states included Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia, and Alabama.
More than 10,200 U.S. flights scheduled for Sunday were canceled, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware. More than 4,000 flights were canceled on Saturday.
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., reported that airlines canceled all flights at the airport on Sunday.
Delta Air Lines said on Sunday that it plans to operate on a reduced schedule “subject to actual freezing precipitation conditions and storm conditions in the afternoon.”
The airline adjusted its Saturday schedule, with additional cancellations in the morning for Atlanta and along the East Coast, including Boston and New York, and said it would send cold weather specialists to support de-icing and baggage teams at several southern airports.
The latest National Weather Service forecast for Sunday through Monday morning calls for heavy snow from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, including up to about 18 inches in New England. Much of the Southeast and parts of the Mid-Atlantic are expected to receive rain and freezing rain.
Meteorologists predicted “extremely low temperatures and dangerously cold winds” from the southern Plains to the Northeast in the storm’s wake, bringing “dangerous and prolonged impacts to travel and infrastructure.”
Federal and State Governments Declare States of Emergency
Calling the storms “historic,” U.S. President Donald Trump approved federal disaster emergency declarations on Saturday for South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, and West Virginia.
“We will continue monitoring and staying in touch with all states in the path of this storm. Stay safe and warm,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia declared weather emergencies, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, in a Saturday press conference, urged Americans to take precautions.
“It’s going to get very, very cold,” Noem said. “So we encourage everyone to stock up on fuel, stock up on food, and we’ll get through this together.”
The Department of Energy (DOE) issued an emergency order on Saturday authorizing the Texas Electric Reliability Council to deploy backup generation resources at data centers and other critical facilities, aiming to limit power outages in the state.
On Sunday, the DOE issued an emergency order authorizing PJM Interconnection grid operator to operate “specified resources” in the Mid-Atlantic region, regardless of limits imposed by state laws or environmental permits.
On Saturday, U.S. grid operators ramped up precautions to avoid rolling blackouts.
Dominion Energy, whose Virginia operations include the world’s largest cluster of data centers, said that if its ice forecast holds, the winter event could be one of the largest to hit the company.
Source:brasil247.com