As another arctic blast threatened to deepen exposure for people already coping with days without heat, the U.S. South braced for additional wind, snow and flooding, while crews worked to restore long-running power outages. By Friday, poweroutage.us reported more than 186,000 homes and businesses without electricity, with most outages concentrated in Mississippi and Tennessee. With another storm predicted to bring near-hurricane force winds, heavy snow and flooding, workers were operating amid the prospect of worsening weather conditions.
In Nashville, where more than 60,000 homes and businesses remained powerless, tensions surfaced over the pace and communication of repairs. Terry Miles, a 59-year-old construction worker whose home had been without power since Sunday, said he was using a fish fryer for heat and worried about carbon monoxide risk. Miles said he attended a Nashville Electric Service news conference “to speak [his] mind” because “I’ve been so cold,” and described the situation as “the coldest and worst I’ve ever been in my damn life.” The utility has said the situation reflected an unprecedented storm.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said he had shared “strong concerns” with Nashville Electric Service leadership, arguing that communication and power restoration needed to improve. Lee said residents “need a clear timeline for power restoration, transparency on the number of linemen deployed, and a better understanding of when work will be completed in their neighborhood.” Nashville Electric Service defended its approach, including by pointing to the storm’s unusual conditions.
Outage recovery efforts continued as crews worked by ground and air to restore lingering service while forecasters warned the next weather system could slow work. In the recovery push, the Tennessee Valley Authority shared a video on its Facebook page showing a worker sitting on the skids of a hovering helicopter to repair a power structure. The article also described arctic air moving into the Southeast, with temperatures expected to drop into the teens in cities such as Nashville on Friday night.
Meteorologists also warned that subfreezing weather would persist in parts of the eastern U.S. into February. There was a high chance of heavy snow in the Carolinas, Virginia and northeast Georgia over the weekend, with some forecasts calling for as much as a foot in parts of North Carolina. Snow was also possible along the East Coast from Maryland to Maine, and forecasters expected wind and snow that could bring blizzard conditions before the storm moved out to sea.
State and local governments prepared for the prospect of roads becoming dangerous and for communities less accustomed to snow. In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina—where the article said residents are more accustomed to hurricanes—the National Weather Service predicted 6 inches of snow, and the city had no snow removal equipment. Mayor Mark Kruea said the city would “use what we can find” such as a motor grader or bulldozer, adding that at a place like Myrtle Beach “there is only a few things you can do to get ready for snow.”
In North Carolina’s Outer Banks, long-term residents raised concerns about additional coastal damage as the storm threatened to bring snow. In Dare County, resident Bob Woodard said he worried that more unoccupied houses in communities such as Rodanthe and Buxton could collapse into the Atlantic Ocean. Elsewhere in the region, the article described widespread expectations for several inches of snow, including possibilities of around a foot in some areas of eastern counties.
With outages stretching into their sixth day in parts of Mississippi and Tennessee, experts warned that hypothermia risk increases as cold exposure continues. Dr. Zheng Ben Ma, medical director of the University of Washington Medical Center’s northwest emergency department, said more vulnerable people—including the elderly, infants and those with underlying health conditions—may develop symptoms within hours, with possible signs including exhaustion, slurred speech and memory loss. Ma also said that by days six and seven, even healthy, resilient people become more likely to experience “deleterious effects of the cold temperature.”
Dr. David Nestler, an emergency medicine specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, said frostbite also remained a concern in southern states, where people might not own clothes suited for northern winter conditions. Mississippi officials said the storm was their worst winter since 1994, while state records described opening nearly 80 warming centers and National Guard troops delivering supplies by truck and helicopter. The article said Yazoo Valley Electric Power Association workers were working 16-hour days to restore electricity, including for some workers whose own homes still lacked power.
In addition to cold-related health risks, the article said nearly 90 people had died in bitter cold from Texas to New Jersey, with about half of the deaths reported in Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. It said some deaths were attributed to hypothermia, while others were suspected to be related to carbon monoxide exposure, and officials had not released specific details about how some people died.