Jan 26 - A potent winter storm that brought heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain forced widespread power disruptions across a large portion of the United States, leaving in excess of 823,000 customers without electricity early on Monday. The outages spanned regions from the Ohio Valley and the mid-South up to New England, according to consolidated outage tallies.
Utilities reporting significant impacts included Nashville Electric Service - commonly referred to as NES - and Entergy. NES reported that roughly 172,000 of its 463,455 customers were without power. Entergy had more than 142,000 of its approximately 3.05 million U.S. customers affected, based on the outage tracking data.
Nashville Electric Service posted an update on X stating: "NES lineworkers will continue overnight and we will not stop until power is back on for all customers." That message underlined the ongoing restoration effort as crews worked through adverse conditions.
Duke Energy also featured in the outage data, with PowerOutage.us indicating that North Carolina accounted for a substantial share of Duke Energy's customer losses. Duke Energy had expected customer outages to increase through late Sunday as the storm progressed.
Major outages by state (customer counts):
- Tennessee - 248,401
- Mississippi - 157,516
- Louisiana - 123,929
- Texas - 58,754
- Kentucky - 50,228
- South Carolina - 43,441
- Georgia - 37,609
- North Carolina - 29,248
Total out: 823,162
The outage figures reflect the situation early on Monday and were compiled from outage-tracking resources. Utility companies continued restoration work amid ongoing winter conditions, with some providers explicitly forecasting further increases in affected customers as the storm moved through impacted regions.
This event underscores the concentration of impacts within specific utilities and states, and highlights the operational demands placed on line crews during sustained winter weather. As utilities prioritize repair and restoration, the evolving customer counts and timing of full recovery remain dependent on the storm's persistence and on-the-ground conditions confronting repair teams.