- Summary
- Companies
- Snow, sleet, freezing rain, dangerous cold expected Sunday
- Federal emergency declarations approved in at least 12 states
- Outages impact states including Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas
- More than 9,600 flight cancellations likely on Sunday
WASHINGTON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - More than 500,000 customers in the U.S. as far west as Texas were without power and more than 9,600 flights were expected to be canceled on Sunday ahead of a monster winter storm that threatened to paralyze eastern states with heavy snowfall.
Forecasters said snow, sleet, freezing rain and dangerously frigid temperatures would sweep the eastern two-thirds of the nation on Sunday and into the week.
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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.
"We will continue to monitor, and stay in touch with all States in the path of this storm. Stay Safe, and Stay Warm," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
'CRIPPLING TO LOCALLY CATASTROPHIC IMPACTS' FORECAST
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 Americans to take precautions.
"It’s going to be very, very cold," Noem said. "So we'd encourage everybody to stock up on fuel, stock up on food, and we will get through this together."
"We have utility crews that are working to restore that as quick as possible," Noem added.
The number of outages continued to rise. As of 7:23 a.m. EST (1223 GMT) on Sunday, more than 500,000 U.S. customers were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us, with more than 100,000 each in Mississippi, Texas, and Tennessee. Other states affected included Louisiana and New Mexico.
ENERGY DEPARTMENT ORDERS BACKUP RESOURCES
The Department of Energy on Saturday issued an emergency order authorizing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to deploy backup generation resources at data centers and other major facilities, aiming to limit blackouts in the state.
Item 1 of 4 A man pushes his car amidst snowfall as Winter Storm Fern leaves drivers stranded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, January 25, 2026, in this screen grab from video. REUTERS/Eric Cox
[1/4]A man pushes his car amidst snowfall as Winter Storm Fern leaves drivers stranded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, January 25, 2026, in this screen grab from video. REUTERS/Eric Cox Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
On Sunday, the DOE issued an emergency order to authorize 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 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 9,600 U.S. flights scheduled for Sunday were canceled, according to flight tracking website FlightAware, with over 4,000 flights canceled on Saturday.
AIRLINES, GRID OPERATORS SCRAMBLE TO PREPARE
Major U.S. airlines warned passengers to stay alert for abrupt flight changes and cancellations.
Delta Air Lines
(DAL.N), opens new tabadjusted its schedule on Saturday, with additional cancellations in the morning for Atlanta and along the East Coast, including in Boston and New York City.
It would relocate experts from cold-weather hubs to support de-icing and baggage teams at several southern airports, the airline said.
JetBlue
(JBLU.O), opens new tabsaid that as of Saturday morning it had canceled about 1,000 flights through Monday.
United Airlines
(UAL.O), opens new tabsaid it had proactively canceled some flights in places with the worst expected weather.
U.S. electric grid operators on Saturday stepped up precautions to avoid rotating blackouts.
Dominion Energy
(D.N), opens new tab, whose Virginia operations include the largest collection of data centers in the world, said if its ice forecast held, the winter event could be among the largest to affect the company.
Reporting by Phil Stewart and Lewis Krauskopf; Additional reporting by Chandni Shah, Devika Nair, and Preetika Parashuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Sergio Non, Chizu Nomiyama, Edwina Gibbs and Bernadette Baum
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Phil Stewart has reported from more than 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and South Sudan. An award-winning Washington-based national security reporter, Phil has appeared on NPR, PBS NewsHour, Fox News and other programs and moderated national security events, including at the Reagan National Defense Forum and the German Marshall Fund. He is a recipient of the Edwin M. Hood Award for Diplomatic Correspondence and the Joe Galloway Award.
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