A massive winter storm battered large parts of the United States on Sunday, cutting power to more than one million customers and forcing the cancellation of over 10,000 flights, as heavy snow, ice and freezing temperatures paralyzed eastern and southern states.
Electricity outages spread as far west as New Mexico as snow, sleet and freezing rain swept across the eastern two-thirds of the country. By Sunday afternoon, more than one million customers were without power nationwide, according to PowerOutage.us. Tennessee reported at least 330,000 outages, while Mississippi and Louisiana each recorded more than 100,000 customers without electricity. Texas, Kentucky, Georgia, West Virginia and Alabama were also affected.
Air travel faced severe disruption. Flight tracking website FlightAware reported more than 10,800 flight cancellations on Sunday, following more than 4,000 cancellations on Saturday. Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC, said all flights were canceled for the day. Data showed that more than 80 percent of flights were canceled at major airports serving metropolitan areas, including New York, Philadelphia and Charlotte, North Carolina.
Delta Air Lines said it planned to operate a reduced schedule, depending on weather conditions. The airline had already adjusted its operations on Saturday, canceling additional flights in Atlanta and along the East Coast, including Boston and New York City. Delta also deployed staff from cold-weather hubs to assist with de-icing and baggage operations at southern airports.
The National Weather Service forecast heavy snowfall from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast through Monday morning, with parts of New England expected to receive up to 18 inches of snow. Much of the Southeast and sections of the Mid-Atlantic were expected to experience rain and freezing rain. Forecasters also warned of bitterly cold temperatures and dangerous wind chills across large areas of the country, raising concerns about prolonged travel disruptions and infrastructure damage.
Federal and state authorities moved quickly to respond. President Donald Trump approved federal emergency disaster declarations for South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, Maryland, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana and West Virginia. The Department of Homeland Security said 17 states and the District of Columbia had declared weather emergencies.
Officials warned that ice accumulation posed a serious threat to power infrastructure. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the prolonged cold would keep ice weighing down power lines, increasing the risk of outages even where lines had not immediately collapsed.
The Department of Energy issued emergency orders allowing grid operators to deploy backup generation resources. In Texas, the Electric Reliability Council received authorization to use backup power at data centers and major facilities. On Sunday, grid operator PJM Interconnection was granted emergency authority to run specified resources across the mid-Atlantic, overriding certain regulatory limits.
Electric grid operators nationwide increased precautions to prevent rotating blackouts. Dominion Energy said the storm could become one of the largest winter events to impact its Virginia operations, which include the world’s largest concentration of data centers.