NEW YORK: A massive winter storm moving across the eastern half of the US on Tuesday ahead of a forecast brutal freeze this weekend knocked out power to over 302,000 homes and businesses in nine states.

The hardest hit states so far were Georgia with over 65,000 power outages, Florida with over 62,000 outages and Alabama with over 58,000 outages, according to data from PowerOutage.us.

Southern Co operates the biggest power companies in Georgia and Alabama, while NextEra Energy is the biggest power provider in Florida.

Extreme weather is a reminder of the February freeze in 2021 that left millions in Texas and other US Central states without power, water and heat for days, and a winter storm in December 2022 — known as Elliott in the energy industry — which almost caused power and natural gas systems to collapse in parts of the eastern half of the country. The current storm is blanketing an area from Minnesota in the north to Alabama in the south and from Kansas in the west to North Carolina in the east, according to AccuWeather.com. It is moving toward the US East Coast and the Northeast.

The storm is coming ahead of what will likely be the most frigid weather in over a year since the December 2022 storm blanketed much of the eastern half of the country, according to data from financial firm LSEG.

LSEG projected that natural gas demand, used to heat about half the homes in the country, would reach a daily record of 169.2 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) on Monday, Jan 15. That is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the record gas use, which includes exports, is expected even though many businesses and government offices will be closed for a long US holiday this weekend.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2024