Winter storm causes over 350K power outages nationwide
Tennessee was worst-hit state with over 130K outages Friday morning
Hundreds of thousands of people are without power nationwide after freezing rain and heavy snow covered tree limbs and power lines over a 2,000-mile stretch.
As of 8:30 a.m. ET Friday, hundreds of thousands of customers in Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York were without power after the major winter storm traveled from central U.S. into the South before making its way to the Northeast, according to data from PowerOutage.US.
In total, just over 350,000 homes and businesses are still without power across the U.S.
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By Friday morning, Tennessee was the worst-hit state, with more than 130,000 customers in the dark.
As of 8:30 a.m. ET, Ohio had the second most power outages, leaving more than 84,000 people without heat, hot water and running refrigerators.
Utility crews are working around the clock to restore power, but the "treacherous road conditions and falling trees" have slowed down their efforts, according to AEP Ohio.
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The outages in Texas, which totaled about 16,700 by 8:30 a.m. ET Friday, came nearly a year after the catastrophic freeze in February 2021 that buckled the state’s power grid for days, leading to hundreds of deaths in one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history.
Facing a new test of Texas’ grid, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said it was holding up and on track to have more than enough power to get through the storm. At its peak, Texas had about 70,000 outages by Thursday morning, nowhere close to the 4 million outages reported in 2021.
Abbott and local officials said Thursday’s outages were due to high winds or icy and downed transmission lines, not grid failures.
WINTER STORM CAUSES NEARLY 4K CANCELED FLIGHTS
The storm traveled north, leaving more than 33,000 people without power in Pennsylvania, while just under 40,000 are in the dark in New York as of 8:30 a.m. ET Friday, according to PowerOutage.US.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.