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Nashville, much of Tennessee hit hard; 325,000 lose power to freezing rain
A massive winter storm dumped sleet, freezing rain and snow across much of the U.S. on Sunday, bringing subzero temperatures and paralyzing air and road traffic. Power lines were draped in ice, and hundreds of thousands of people in the Southeast were left without electricity.
The unique scope of the storm shows it affecting areas all the way from New Mexico and Texas all the way into New England, a 2,000 mile spread.
The ice and snowfall were expected to continue into Monday in much of the country, followed by very low temperatures, which could cause dangerous travel and infrastructure impacts to linger for several days, the National Weather Service said.
Heavy snow was forecast from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while “catastrophic ice accumulation” threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.
President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected to come. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned commodities, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.
As of Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, Santorelli said. The number of customers without power topped 900,000, according to poweroutage.us, and the number was rising.
Tennessee was hardest hit with nearly 325,000 customers out, mostly due to ice accumulations of half an inch or more, with icicles hanging from power lines and overburdened tree limbs crashing to the ground. Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi all had more than 100,000 customers in the dark. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were without power in Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama and West Virginia.
“May God have mercy on Corinth, MS! ... The sound of the trees snapping, exploding & falling through the night have been unnerving to say the least,” resident Kathy Ragan said on Facebook.
In Oxford, Mississippi, police on Sunday morning used social media to tell residents to stay home as the danger of being outside was too great. Local utility crews were also pulled from their jobs during the overnight hours.
“Due to life-threatening conditions, Oxford Utilities has made the difficult decision to pull our crews off the road for the night,” the utility company posted on Facebook early Sunday. “Trees are actively snapping and falling around our linemen while they are in the bucket trucks.”
Tippah Electric Power in Mississippi said there was “catastrophic damage” and that it could be “weeks instead of days” to restore everyone.
The Tennessee Valley Authority provides power to some utilities across the region, and spokesperson Scott Brooks said the bulk power system remains stable but overnight icing had caused power interruptions in north Mississippi, north Alabama, southern middle Tennessee and the Knoxville, Tennessee, area.
Even once the ice and snow stop falling, the danger will continue.
“Behind the storm it’s just going to get bitterly cold across basically the entirety of the eastern two-thirds of the nation, east of the Rockies,” she said. That means the ice and snow won’t melt as fast, which could hinder some efforts to restore power and other infrastructure.
Along the Gulf Coast, temperatures were balmy Sunday, hitting the high 60s and low 70s, but thermometers were expected to drop into the high 20s and low 30s there by Monday morning. The National Weather Service warned of damaging winds and a slight risk of severe storms and possibly even a brief tornado.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people died as temperatures plunged Saturday before the snows arrived in earnest.
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