(Bloomberg) - A massive winter storm reached the US Atlantic Coast on Sunday, bringing heavy snow and ice, straining electric grids and grounding thousands of flights at levels not seen since the pandemic.
Temperatures plunged on the storm’s eastward path. Parts of Texas and the Mid-South were coated in freezing rain — and a layer of ice thick enough to take down power lines. Up to 0.75 inches (1.9 centimeters) of ice is expected to accumulate across Nashville and surrounding areas through Sunday night.
More than 1 million homes and businesses across the US — the majority of them in Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana — were without electricity at 2:30 p.m. ET.
Air travel has all but ground to a halt in some cities. The storm forced more than 17,000 cancellations from Saturday through Monday, according to data from FlightAware.
As of 10 a.m. Sunday, with snow falling, more than 80% of departures were canceled at Newark Liberty International Airport, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International Airport, based on data from aviation analytics company Cirium. Cancellations at Washington Reagan airport topped 90%.
New England may see up to 18 inches of snow through Monday, according to the US Weather Prediction Center, with up to a foot possible in New York City. Some of that snow may fall as sleet, potentially icing roads.
New York City officials announced that its approximately 500,000 public-school students would have remote instruction on Monday.
In the South, ice accumulations and power outages have been severe enough to knock weather stations offline in Mississippi, said Rob Carolan, chief executive officer of Hometown Forecast Services Inc., leaving government forecasters and first responders in the dark about conditions.
Electric Grids
The biggest US grid, PJM Interconnection, is bracing for record-breaking hourly winter demand on Monday. The operator is asking customers, primarily businesses and factories, to throttle back power usage to help avoid a supply emergency that would trigger rolling blackouts.
Earlier Sunday, the Energy Department said it issued an emergency order that authorized PJM to run power plants at maximum capability, including those fueled by coal and oil, regardless of limits established under environmental rules or state law.
Wholesale electricity was trading around $600 per megawatt-hour in Virginia, Maryland and Washington after earlier topping $1,200, more that double the grid-wide price on PJM’s system. Demand has surged in northern Virginia as data centers crowd the area, leaving that section of the grid particularly constrained.
Meanwhile, the Texas grid is expected to face tight conditions through Monday. The Energy Department ordered the state’s grid operator to use backup diesel generators at data centers in periods of extreme stress.
Electricity usage there will approach 76 gigawatts Sunday evening and then rise to 84,5 gigawatts Monday morning, which would be close to the all-time high, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid’s operator. (A traditional nuclear reactor has a capacity of one gigawatt.)
Another grid, ISO New England, on secured a federal waiver to allow for increased generating capacity through the end of the month to cope with a prolonged period high demand. New England was generating 35% of its electricity by burning oil as of 3:17 p.m., as wholesale natural gas prices soared.
Even as snow and sleet precipitation begin to taper off, the risk of power shortages or blackouts will increase in some places Monday.
Snow and ice are unlikely to melt anytime soon. Temperatures are forecast to remain “bitterly cold,” forecaster Paul Ziegenfelder of the Weather Prediction Center wrote Sunday, making travel difficult and likely causing power demand to remain stubbornly high for days.
‘Absolute Mess’
Some of the heaviest ice cover has built up through northern Mississippi, including the college town of Oxford, which is likely to see up to an inch accumulate through Monday.
The area is buried in “an absolute mess of downed trees and power lines due to the added weight of ice,” forecasters for the National Weather Service wrote in an update Sunday afternoon, noting widespread power outages. “Roads in these areas are extremely dangerous and at times, impassable.”
Conditions aren’t likely to improve any time soon: Much of the mid-South and Texas is on track for near-freezing temperatures heading into the work week, which may prevent snow and ice from quickly melting off.
The country’s natural gas system also faces greater risk of equipment failures and wells freezing off, which risk curtailing critical fuel supplies to generators. Refiners and chemical plants on Texas’ Gulf Coast, meanwhile, shuttered units amid the deep freeze, according to filings.
By Lauren Rosenthal and Naureen S. Malik
With assistance from Brian Eckhouse, Brian K. Sullivan, Mary Hui and Sri Taylor.
