On Christmas Eve, a winter storm caused power outages affecting over 1.5 million people across the nation at 11:30am EST, according to PowerOutage data.
Just before noon on Christmas Eve, a website monitoring and collecting live power outage data throughout the United States exposed that more than 1 million inhabitants were without electricity.
According to the website, an astonishing 566,200 outages are mainly affecting the Southeast region of America. Out of this amount, a whopping 370,000 blackouts have been reported in North Carolina alone!
Power Outage tallied the outages per region:
- South East… 566,200
- New England… 362,911
- South… 325,259
- Mid-Atlantic… 210,734
- Great Lakes… 24,366
- Pacific… 20,028
- MidWest… 1,850
- Territories… 1,821
- Mountain… 988
Fox Weather warned that dangerously frigid temperatures were expected to hit many areas of America, with the potential for widespread power outages. In these brutal cold conditions, outages can become life-threatening.
As Saturday approaches, the intense “bomb cyclone” will finally be leaving the United States and sailing off to Canada. Nevertheless, this winter storm has caused significant snowfall as well as powerful winds that are producing dangerous wind chills – a major hazard for those without electricity. This could even bring about further blackouts across America according to Fox Weather’s report on Friday night.