Winter Storm, Freezing Temps Test Infrastructure, Power Grids

Monica Medina, former principal deputy secretary at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said that the US needs to prepare for more extreme weather including artic blasts. Medina also commented on the impact of Trump administration funding and personnel cuts to NOAA weather prediction services.

US power grids are under mounting pressure following a winter storm that unleashed deep cold and heavy snow and ice from Texas to Maine, driving up heating demand and raising the risk of blackouts. 
The storm affected millions of people across the eastern two-thirds of the US, with 765,000 homes and businesses without electricity as of 1:30 p.m. New York time as snow and ice ravaged local distribution lines, according to PowerOutage.us. More than half of the outages were reported in three states: Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana.
So far, power grids have avoided large system-level cuts, but sub-zero temperatures and dangerous wind chills are set to linger all week, testing seasonal power demand records from Texas to New England. Some areas have reported extensive damage to trees and power lines and blocked roads, which could slow electricity restoration, said Nicole Joniak, a meteorologist at AccuWeather Inc.
“Power may take days to be restored across the hardest hit areas,” she said. “This will be especially dangerous, as temperatures will be well below historical averages across much of the eastern and central United States this week.”
More than an inch of ice blanketed the Southern Plains and Southeast, including parts of Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, Joniak said. The northeast had the heaviest snow, with more than 23 inches (58 centimeters) in New Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In New York City, 11.4 inches fell in Central Park, according to AccuWeather.
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