Dangerous, record US cold could last for days, deepening crippling winter storm’s impacts

The Lower Manhattan skyline is seen in the background as a man runs along a path in the Brooklyn borough of New York City today. A monster storm in the United States killed at least 11 people on Monday, prompting warnings to stay off the roads, mass flight cancellations and power outages after a weekend of misery. The storm dumped snow, sleet and freezing rain across swathes of the country from Texas to New England. Photo / Angela Weiss, AFP

Ice-covered roads in the United States Southeast glistened today, the sun poking out and the frost-covered landscape bright and sparkling.

But after freezing rain pelted this area for much of the weekend with surface temperatures hovering in the high 20F degrees, the icy remains were markers of hazards far from over.

A massive blizzard that blanketed about 220 million people across the US with heavy snow, crippling ice and widespread power outages cleared by today but left behind a bone-deep chill.

Dangerous and record-breaking cold temperatures have settled in as residents and officials work to assess the tempest’s damage.

The impact of the cold will be amplified by how long it will last. In many areas - one being the capital Washington DC - temperatures may not rise above freezing until early February, with a freezing streak that started in DC during the evening of January 23.

At least 11 people died across numerous states in incidents related to the storm, the Washington Post confirmed. Hundreds of thousands remain without power, and forecasters are closely watching the potential for another storm next weekend.

The prolonged frigid temperatures could hamstring efforts to get power back to more than 700,000 customers experiencing outages across the country.

Those outages appeared mostly on the local level, rather than affecting widespread grids, analysts said.

Heavy ice can weigh down power lines or break tree branches that can wreck infrastructure. Frigid temperatures mean power companies hoping to do repairs will continue to face slick conditions on the roads.

Outages occurred mainly across the South, affecting more than 200,000 customers in Tennessee - where the brunt of the outages were focused - more than 100,000 in both Mississippi and Louisiana, and tens of thousands of customers in Kentucky, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia.

“We are making progress despite difficult conditions for workers, including fallen trees, deep snow, icy roads and frigid temperatures,” said Scott Brooks, the spokesperson for Tennessee Valley Authority, a federally owned electric utility corporation that covers all of Tennessee, which is facing the most outages nationwide.

Brooks said crews were on the ground and in the air assessing damage and restoring lines with all available resources, including bucket trucks, dozers, track equipment, skid steers, UTVs and chainsaw crews on the ground, with helicopters and drones overhead.

The cold temperatures forecast could also mean a second form of outages, as demand strains grids to their limits, said Alex Shattuck, director of grid transformation at the Energy Systems Integration Group.

PJM, the US’ biggest grid operator that serves more than 67 million people across the country, said its demand could peak to more than 130,000 megawatts for seven consecutive days. That would mark “a winter streak that PJM has never experienced”, the company said in a statement.

“They may run into a similar issue that we saw in Texas,” Shattuck said, referring to a grid failure that plagued the state in 2021 amid freezing temperatures that left millions without power for days.

Today, cold weather alerts were in effect for about 210 million people across the US, with locations in the Midwest and Plains breaking daily low temperature records.

“Frostbite and hypothermia will occur if unprotected skin is exposed to these temperatures. An extended period of freezing temperatures could cause ruptured water pipes,” the National Weather Service wrote in Jackson, Mississippi, which serves areas of the state that were most affected by the ice storm.

Here are the low temperatures in some cities today: Minneapolis, -12F (-24C); Springfield, Missouri -7F (-21C); Tulsa, 1F(-17C); Dallas 15F (-9C).

Throughout the week, record low temperatures are possible in 24 states and Washington, DC, with some places forecast to break records that have stood for more than a century - most notably in Texas, Louisiana, and Tennessee, states that were hit hard by power outages.

Across the Midwest and Northeast, fresh snow will make the deep freeze worse by causing temperatures to drop lower at night and reflect sunlight during the day. The cold will also be exacerbated by gusty winds throughout the week.

Another storm?

Forecasters are closely monitoring the potential for another storm near the East Coast this weekend.

While it’s too early to tell if there will be major weather impacts, several reliable computer model runs today shifted in a stormier direction, indicating that a weekend storm was possible.

Although this frigid weather pattern is ripe for snow, the weekend storm depends on a swirling disturbance currently near Hudson Bay in Canada looping southward and stalling near the East Coast - a complex weather setup that will cause forecasts to bounce around in the coming days.

If another storm forms, eastern areas hard hit by snow and ice this weekend could get much more.

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