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More than 500,000 customers in the United States as far west as Texas were without power, and more than 9,600 flights were expected to be cancelled on Sunday ahead of a monster winter storm that threatened to paralyze eastern states with heavy snowfall.
Forecasters said snow, sleet, freezing rain and dangerously frigid temperatures would sweep the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. on Sunday and into the week.
Calling the storms “historic,” U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday approved federal emergency disaster declarations 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 Stay Warm,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform.
‘Crippling to locally catastrophic impacts’ forecast
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have declared weather emergencies, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.
At a news conference on Saturday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem warned Americans to take precautions.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees work ahead of a news conference at the FEMA National Response Co-ordination Center in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. (Nathan Howard/Reuters)
“It’s going to be very, very cold,” Noem said. “So we’d encourage everybody to stock up on fuel, stock up on food, and we will get through this together.”
She added, “We have utility crews that are working to restore that as quick as possible.”
The number of outages continued to rise. As of 7:23 a.m. ET on Sunday, more than 500,000 U.S. customers were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us, with more than 100,000 each in Mississippi, Texas and Tennessee. Other states affected included Louisiana and New Mexico.
Energy Department orders backup resources
The Department of Energy on Saturday issued an emergency order authorizing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to deploy backup generation resources at data centres and other major facilities, aiming to limit blackouts in the state.
On Sunday, the department issued an emergency order to authorize grid operator PJM Interconnection to run “specified resources” in the mid-Atlantic region, regardless of limits due to state laws or environmental permits.
A pickup truck tows a car stuck in snow as a massive winter storm leaves drivers stranded in Tulsa, Okla., on Sunday, shown in this screen grab from video. (Eric Cox/Reuters)
The U.S. National Weather Service warned of an unusually expansive and long-duration winter storm that would bring widespread heavy ice accumulation in the Southeast, where “crippling to locally catastrophic impacts” can be expected.
Weather service forecasters predicted record cold temperatures and dangerously cold wind chills descending further into the Great Plains region by Monday.
More than 9,600 U.S. flights scheduled for Sunday were cancelled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, with over 4,000 flights cancelled on Saturday.
Airlines, grid operators scramble to prepare
Major U.S. airlines warned passengers to stay alert for abrupt flight changes and cancellations.
Delta Air Lines adjusted its schedule on Saturday, with additional cancellations in the morning for Atlanta and the East Coast, including in Boston and New York City.
It would relocate experts from cold-weather hubs to support de-icing and baggage teams at several southern airports, the airline said.
Snow falls over Scissortail Park during a winter storm in Oklahoma City, Okla., on Saturday. (Nick Oxford/Reuters)
JetBlue said that as of Saturday morning, it had cancelled about 1,000 flights through Monday. United Airlines said it had proactively cancelled some flights in places with the worst expected weather.
U.S. electric grid operators on Saturday stepped up precautions to avoid rotating blackouts.
Dominion Energy, whose Virginia operations include the largest collection of data centres in the world, said if its ice forecast held, the winter event could be among the largest to affect the company.
