Winter storm hits Tennessee, Carolinas, Georgia and Virginia as power outages soar and flights are cancelled
More than 800,000 customers in the United States, as far west as New Mexico, are without electricity, and about 10,000 flights have been cancelled ahead of a monster winter storm that threatens to paralyse eastern states with heavy snowfall.
Forecasters said snow, sleet, freezing rain and dangerously frigid temperatures would sweep the eastern two-thirds of the US on Sunday and into the week.
Calling the storms “historic,” 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.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“We will continue to monitor and stay in touch with all States in the path of this storm. Stay Safe, and Stay Warm,” Mr Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have declared weather emergencies, the Department of Homeland Security said.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, at a news conference on Saturday, warned the public to take precautions.
“It’s going to be very, very cold,” Ms Noem said.
“So we’d encourage everybody to stock up on fuel, stock up on food, and we will get through this together.”
The number of power outages continued to rise.
As of 10am EST on Sunday, more than 800,000 US customers were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us, with at least 300,000 in Tennessee and more than 100,000 each in Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana.
Other states affected included Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina and Alabama.
The Department of Energy on Saturday issued an emergency order authorising 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 DOE issued an emergency order to authorise grid operator PJM Interconnection to run “specified resources” in the mid-Atlantic region, regardless of limits due to state laws or environmental permits.
The National Weather Service warned of an unusually expansive and long-duration winter storm that would bring widespread, heavy ice accumulation in the country’s 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 10,100 US flights scheduled for Sunday were cancelled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware.
More than 4000 flights were cancelled on Saturday.
