More than 847,000 homes and businesses across the United States were without power late on Sunday after a severe winter storm brought heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain from the Ohio Valley and mid-South to New England.
The storm, which peaked over the weekend, initially left more than 950,000 customers in the dark before restoration efforts reduced the number of affected users, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
U.S. President Donald Trump described the weather event as “historic” and approved federal emergency disaster declarations for a dozen states, mainly across the mid-South, to support response and recovery efforts.
The hardest-hit utility was Nashville Electric Service in Tennessee, where about 185,000 customers were without power, while Entergy reported more than 145,000 outages across its service areas.
Duke Energy warned that outages could continue rising, particularly in North Carolina, as freezing conditions persisted and repair crews worked through the night.
States most affected included Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia, highlighting the widespread impact of the storm on critical infrastructure.