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Nearly a Million American Homes Without Power in Deep Freeze
By Reuters | 26 Jan, 2026

A massive winter storm knocked out power across 7 states, leaving 847,000 homes and businesses in the dark Sunday night.

A pedestrian uses his mobile phone to photograph snowfall, as Winter Storm Fern stretches across a large swath of the United States, in Brooklyn, New York City, U.S., January 25, 2026. REUTERS/Bing Guan

More than 847,000 homes and businesses remained without power late on Sunday as a severe winter storm spread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain across parts of the U.S. from the Ohio Valley and mid-South to New England.

Some states restored services during the day, reducing the number affected from more than 950,000 customers earlier.

The hardest-hit utilities included Nashville Electric Service in Tennessee, where about 185,000 of its 463,455 customers were without power, and Entergy with more than 145,000 of its 3.05 million customers across the U.S. with no power, according to PowerOutage.us.

Calling the storm "historic," U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday approved federal emergency disaster declarations for a dozen states, mostly in the mid-South.

"NES lineworkers will continue overnight and we will not stop until power is back on for all customers," Nashville Electric Service said in a post on X. 

Meanwhile, Duke Energy said it expects the number of customer outages to increase steadily throughout Sunday evening. North Carolina currently accounts for most of Duke Energy's outages, according to PowerOutage.us.

Here are the major outages by state:

State Outages 

Tennessee 258,004 

Mississippi 157,573 

Louisiana 123,156 

Texas 65,003 

Kentucky 48,942 

South Carolina 47,587 

North Carolina 36,289 

Georgia 35,206 

Total Out 847,102 

(Reporting by Noel John in Bengaluru; Editing by Kate Mayberry)