A cold blast gripping the US South threatens to bring record-breaking snowfall to New Orleans and Houston and a deep freeze that endangers oil and natural gas output and electrical grids.
Snow and sleet began falling Monday night in Houston, spreading throughout most of southeast Texas by late evening. As much as 4 inches (10 centimeters) may fall by Tuesday, which would be a record for January, the National Weather Service said. New Orleans may get 7 inches, an all-time high for the region, as may Louisiana’s capital Baton Rouge.
Houston airports, including George Bush Intercontinental, William P. Hobby and Ellington, were closed shortly after midnight. Most Tuesday flights at Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans were canceled. Many highways and roads across Louisiana became impassible overnight and were closed, including portions of Interstate 10.
Extreme cold warnings stretch from North Dakota to West Texas.
“It’s a significant storm for so far south,” said Tony Fracasso, a senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center. “It looks like almost the entirety of Texas has some chance of wintry precipitation.”
Frigid temperatures will ride in behind the snow, potentially shaking oil and natural gas production in the short term, while sending electricity demand soaring. As the freeze gripped West Texas Monday morning, temperatures in Odessa — the middle of the oil-rich Permian basin — had only reached 19F (-7.2C) and are set to drop to 15F overnight. Cold can disrupt oil and gas output by causing water in wells and pipelines to freeze.
The Texas grid has a weather watch in place for Monday and Tuesday — an early alert that extreme cold driving up heating needs may strain supplies. Peak electricity demand will climb the next two days, hitting 77.5 gigawatts on Tuesday morning, according a recent forecast by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator. Electricity prices in Dallas will rise to $174 a megawatt-hour at the morning peak, more than double Monday’s high, according to the state grid operator.
Ercot’s projections have been volatile and at times have shown demand may test the winter record of 78.3 gigawatts set last January, though the grid operator expects to have enough supply to meet demand.
Travel Disrupted
Plunging temperatures have also triggered grid warnings outside of Texas. PJM Interconnection, which operates the largest US grid from Washington DC to Illinois, on Sunday issued a “low voltage alert” that extends through Thursday. PJM said demand may climb to 144 gigawatts Tuesday morning, which would topple the decade-long record of nearly 143.3 gigawatts.
Amtrak canceled several trains across the US West and South, the federally funded rail carrier said on its website. Airline tracking service FlightAware said 566 flights within, into or out of the US were scrubbed Monday, as of 4:25 p.m. in New York, while another 5,279 were delayed.
Fracasso said the snow will sweep across Texas late Monday into Louisiana overnight and then onto Mississippi and Alabama by Tuesday. By midweek it will have reached the North Carolina coast and perhaps even spread into southern Virginia before heading out to the Atlantic Ocean.
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