More than 850,000 people in the United States were left without electricity and more than 10,000 flights were canceled this Sunday during a monstrous winter storm that paralyzed the eastern and southern states with heavy snow and ice.
As snow, freezing rain, and dangerously low temperatures spread across two-thirds of the eastern part of the country this Sunday, the number of power outages continued to rise. By late Sunday morning, more than 850,000 U.S. customers were without electricity, according to the website PowerOutage.us, with at least 290,000 in Tennessee and more than 100,000 each in the states of Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana. Other affected states included Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia, and Alabama.
More than 10,200 U.S. flights scheduled for this Sunday were canceled, according to the flight tracking website FlightAware. More than 4,000 flights were canceled on Saturday.
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., reported that airlines had canceled all flights at the airport this Sunday.
Delta Air Lines said this Sunday that it plans to operate on a reduced schedule “subject to real-time freezing precipitation and afternoon storm conditions.”
The airline had 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 relocate 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 predicts heavy snow from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, including up to about 45 centimeters 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 on travel and infrastructure.”
Federal and State Governments Declare Emergencies
Calling the storms “historic,” U.S. President Donald Trump approved federal disaster emergency declarations on Saturday in South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, and West Virginia.
“We will continue to monitor and stay 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, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, in a Saturday press conference, urged Americans to take precautions.
“It’s going to be 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 to data centers and other critical facilities, aiming to limit blackouts 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. electric 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 affect the company.
Source: brasil247.com