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Tag: Power Outages

  • Denver breaks heat record Sunday; temperatures 22 degrees above normal

    Temperatures at Denver International Airport climbed to record highs on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.

    As of 2:28 p.m., temperatures at DIA had reached 68 degrees, according to the weather service. The previous Feb. 15 record of 67 degrees was set in 2017.

    The Sunday record is more than 20 degrees above Denver’s “normal” Feb. 15 high of 45 degrees, weather service records show.

    No other record temperatures are expected in Denver this week, but high winds and low humidity prompted the weather service to issue multiple fire weather watches for the city.

    Fire danger on the Front Range and Eastern Plains may lead to another round of power outages for Colorado, according to Xcel Energy.

    Colorado weather: Power outages possible amid high winds, ‘critical’ fire danger

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    Lauren Penington

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  • Mississippians near two weeks without power after winter storm

    OXFORD, Miss. — Nearly two weeks after an ice storm knocked out power to her home, Barbara Bishop still finds herself trying to flip the lights on and looking in her fridge for food that has since spoiled.

    Bishop, 79, and her 85-year-old husband, George Bishop, live in a rural area near Oxford, Mississippi, where ice-coated trees snapped in half, bringing down power lines and making roads nearly impassable.

    After the storm hit, the Bishops took in their son, granddaughter and two children, whose homes lost both power and water.

    The family endured days of bitter cold with nothing but a gas heater to keep them warm. For a few days, they lost water.

    “It’s just been one of those times you just have to grit, grit your teeth and bare it,” Bishop said.

    Nearly 20,000 customers remained without power in northern Mississippi on Friday, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide. That is down from about 180,000 homes and businesses without power in Mississippi shortly after the storm struck late last month.

    Lafayette County, where Oxford is located, had the most remaining outages of any county on Friday, with about 4,200 customers without power, followed by Tippah County with about 3,500. Panola, Yalobusha and Tishomingo counties all had more than 2,000 customers without power.

    After days of bitter cold, temperatures in Oxford reached 70 degrees on Friday, but the chunks of ice still littered the ground in shaded areas.

    Downed trees had been gathered into large piles on the sides of roads, some burned and still smoldering. While much of the worst damage had been cleared, in some places, power lines still hung low over roads and laid strewn about in parking lots. Everywhere, tree limbs dangled precariously.

    Across the street from the Bishops, Russ Jones and his wife have no electricity or water. For days, they used five-gallon buckets filled with water to flush toilets, cooked on their gas stove and stayed warm by their fireplace.

    “It’s been a shock to the system,” Jones said, adding that he and his wife began staying with friends who have power a few days ago.

    On Friday, Jones’ yard was teaming with volunteers from Eight Days of Hope, a nonprofit that responds to natural disasters. The volunteers cleared snapped tree limbs and hauled away a large tree that had fallen in Jones’ backyard.

    The organization arrived days after the storm and has helped dozens of homeowners clean up their yards and patch damaged roofs. It has also served more than 16,000 free meals.

    Jones said it was a relief to know he had one less thing on his plate. When a volunteer handed him a free T-shirt and a blanket for his wife, he held back tears.

    “It’s just beyond anything I could ever imagine,” he said.

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  • Colossal winter storm kills at least 18; hundreds of thousands without power across US

    The workweek opened with yet more snow dumping on the Northeast under the tail end of a colossal winter storm that brought lingering misery to parts of the South, where freezing rain left hundreds of thousands shivering without electricity Monday. Authorities reported at least 18 weather-related deaths.Deep snow — over a foot extending in a 1,300-mile swath from Arkansas to New England — halted traffic, canceled flights and triggered wide school closures Monday. Up to two feet were forecast in some of the harder-hit places.There were more than 800,000 power outages in the nation on Monday morning, according to poweroutage.com. Most of them were in the South, where weekend blasts of freezing rain caused tree limbs and power lines to snap, inflicting crippling outages on northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee.Utility officials in New Albany, Mississippi, said some homes and businesses could be without electricity for at least a week. In nearby Oxford, where most residents and University of Mississippi students were without power Monday, Mayor Robyn Tannehill said on social media that so many trees, limbs and power lines had fallen that “it looks like a tornado went down every street.”“Apparently, the new status symbol in this town is having electricity,” said Marshall Ramsey, a University of Mississippi journalism professor whose family was running a generator at their Oxford home Monday to power a space heater and keep phones charged.A pair of burly, falling tree branches damaged real estate agent Tim Phillips’ new garage, broke a window and cut off power to his home in Oxford. He said half of his neighbors had homes or vehicles damaged.“It’s just one of those things that you try to prepare for,” Phillips said, “but this one was just unreal.”The U.S. had more than 6,400 flight delays and cancellations nationwide Monday, according to flight tracker flightaware.com.More light to moderate snow was forecast in New England through Monday evening.New York City saw its snowiest day in years, with 11 inches falling on Central Park. Main roads throughout the city were largely clear Monday morning, but pedestrians had to plod through snow on some sidewalks and multiple subway lines with above-ground tracks saw delays.Bitter cold grips much of the nationMeanwhile, bitter cold followed in the storm’s wake. It got down to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Minnesota on Sunday. Many communities across the Midwest, South, and Northeast awakened Monday to subzero weather. The entire Lower 48 states were forecast to have their coldest average low temperature of minus 9.8 F — since January 2014.Record warmth in Florida was the only thing keeping that average from going even colder, said former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Ryan Maue, who calculates national averages based on National Weather Service data.From Montana to the Florida Panhandle, the weather service posted cold weather advisories and extreme cold warnings as temperatures in many places dipped to zero and even colder. Wind made conditions even chillier and the overnight cold refoze roads early Monday in a cruel reprise of the weekend’s lousy travel weather.Even with precipitation ending in Mississippi, “that doesn’t mean the danger is behind us,” Gov. Tate Reeves said in a news conference Sunday.Freezing rain that slickened roads and brought trees and branches down on roads and power lines were the main peril in the South over the weekend. In Corinth, Mississippi, heavy machinery manufacturer Caterpillar told employees at its remanufacturing site to stay home Monday and Tuesday.It already was Mississippi’s worst ice storm since 1994 with its biggest-ever deployment of ice-melting chemicals — 200,000 gallons — plus salt and sand to treat icy roads, Reeves said. He urged people not to drive anywhere unless absolutely necessary. “Do please reach out to friends and family,” Reeves added.At one point Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, authorities said.Some 12,000 flights also were canceled Sunday and nearly 20,000 were delayed.Storm leads to deaths in a number of statesIn New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people who died were found outside as temperatures plunged Saturday, though the cause of their deaths remained under investigation. Two men died of hypothermia related to the storm in Caddo Parish in Louisiana, according to the state health department.In Massachusetts, police said a snowplow backed into a couple walking in a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority parking lot in Norwood on Sunday. A 51-year-old woman was killed and her 47-year-old husband was hospitalized.Two teenagers died in sledding accidents, a 17-year-old boy in Arkansas, and a 16-year-old girl in Texas, authorities said.Three weather-related deaths were announced in Tennessee, authorities said. Further details were not immediately available.___Amy reported from Atlanta. Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. AP journalists Charlotte Kramon in Atlanta; Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee; Kath McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; David Caruso in New York; Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio; Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas, contributed to this story.

    The workweek opened with yet more snow dumping on the Northeast under the tail end of a colossal winter storm that brought lingering misery to parts of the South, where freezing rain left hundreds of thousands shivering without electricity Monday. Authorities reported at least 18 weather-related deaths.

    Deep snow — over a foot extending in a 1,300-mile swath from Arkansas to New England — halted traffic, canceled flights and triggered wide school closures Monday. Up to two feet were forecast in some of the harder-hit places.

    There were more than 800,000 power outages in the nation on Monday morning, according to poweroutage.com. Most of them were in the South, where weekend blasts of freezing rain caused tree limbs and power lines to snap, inflicting crippling outages on northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee.

    Utility officials in New Albany, Mississippi, said some homes and businesses could be without electricity for at least a week. In nearby Oxford, where most residents and University of Mississippi students were without power Monday, Mayor Robyn Tannehill said on social media that so many trees, limbs and power lines had fallen that “it looks like a tornado went down every street.”

    “Apparently, the new status symbol in this town is having electricity,” said Marshall Ramsey, a University of Mississippi journalism professor whose family was running a generator at their Oxford home Monday to power a space heater and keep phones charged.

    A pair of burly, falling tree branches damaged real estate agent Tim Phillips’ new garage, broke a window and cut off power to his home in Oxford. He said half of his neighbors had homes or vehicles damaged.

    “It’s just one of those things that you try to prepare for,” Phillips said, “but this one was just unreal.”

    The U.S. had more than 6,400 flight delays and cancellations nationwide Monday, according to flight tracker flightaware.com.

    More light to moderate snow was forecast in New England through Monday evening.

    New York City saw its snowiest day in years, with 11 inches falling on Central Park. Main roads throughout the city were largely clear Monday morning, but pedestrians had to plod through snow on some sidewalks and multiple subway lines with above-ground tracks saw delays.

    Bitter cold grips much of the nation

    Meanwhile, bitter cold followed in the storm’s wake. It got down to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of Minnesota on Sunday. Many communities across the Midwest, South, and Northeast awakened Monday to subzero weather. The entire Lower 48 states were forecast to have their coldest average low temperature of minus 9.8 F — since January 2014.

    Record warmth in Florida was the only thing keeping that average from going even colder, said former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Ryan Maue, who calculates national averages based on National Weather Service data.

    From Montana to the Florida Panhandle, the weather service posted cold weather advisories and extreme cold warnings as temperatures in many places dipped to zero and even colder. Wind made conditions even chillier and the overnight cold refoze roads early Monday in a cruel reprise of the weekend’s lousy travel weather.

    Even with precipitation ending in Mississippi, “that doesn’t mean the danger is behind us,” Gov. Tate Reeves said in a news conference Sunday.

    Freezing rain that slickened roads and brought trees and branches down on roads and power lines were the main peril in the South over the weekend. In Corinth, Mississippi, heavy machinery manufacturer Caterpillar told employees at its remanufacturing site to stay home Monday and Tuesday.

    It already was Mississippi’s worst ice storm since 1994 with its biggest-ever deployment of ice-melting chemicals — 200,000 gallons — plus salt and sand to treat icy roads, Reeves said. He urged people not to drive anywhere unless absolutely necessary. “Do please reach out to friends and family,” Reeves added.

    At one point Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, authorities said.

    Some 12,000 flights also were canceled Sunday and nearly 20,000 were delayed.

    Storm leads to deaths in a number of states

    In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people who died were found outside as temperatures plunged Saturday, though the cause of their deaths remained under investigation. Two men died of hypothermia related to the storm in Caddo Parish in Louisiana, according to the state health department.

    In Massachusetts, police said a snowplow backed into a couple walking in a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority parking lot in Norwood on Sunday. A 51-year-old woman was killed and her 47-year-old husband was hospitalized.

    Two teenagers died in sledding accidents, a 17-year-old boy in Arkansas, and a 16-year-old girl in Texas, authorities said.

    Three weather-related deaths were announced in Tennessee, authorities said. Further details were not immediately available.

    ___

    Amy reported from Atlanta. Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. AP journalists Charlotte Kramon in Atlanta; Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee; Kath McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; David Caruso in in New York; Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio; Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana sand Heather Hollingsworth in Mission, Kansas, contributed to this story.

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  • Ice from winter storm leaves a million customers without power across the South

    A massive winter storm dumped sleet, freezing rain and snow across much of the U.S. on Sunday, bringing subzero temperatures and paralyzing air and road traffic. Tree branches and power lines snapped under the weight of ice, and about a million homes and businesses in the Southeast were left without electricity.The ice and snowfall were expected to continue into Monday in much of the country, followed by very low temperatures, which could cause “dangerous travel and infrastructure impacts” to linger for several days, the National Weather Service said. Heavy snow was forecast from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while “catastrophic ice accumulation” threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.”It is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,” weather service meteorologist Allison Santorelli said in a phone interview. “It was affecting areas all the way from New Mexico, Texas, all the way into New England, so we’re talking like a 2,000 mile spread.”President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned commodities, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state was bracing for the longest cold stretch and highest snow totals it has seen in years. Communities near the Canadian border have already seen record-breaking subzero temperatures, with Watertown registering minus 34 degrees Fahrenheit and Copenhagen minus 49 F, she said. “An Arctic siege has taken over our state,” Hochul said. “It is brutal, it is bone chilling and it is dangerous.” Effects of the stormIn Corinth, Mississippi, where power outages were widespread, Caterpillar told employees at its remanufacturing site to stay home Monday and Tuesday.”May God have mercy on Corinth, MS! … The sound of the trees snapping, exploding & falling through the night have been unnerving to say the least,” resident Kathy Ragan wrote on Facebook.Video below: Dashcam captures moment tree falls from weight of ice in North LouisianaOn the east side of Nashville, Jami Joe, 41, had power Sunday afternoon but she feared the juice might not last long as ice-heavy limbs from mature oak and pecan trees continued to crash around her house. “It’s only a matter of time if a limb strikes a power line,” she predicted.In Little Rock, Arkansas, officials say the weight of accumulated snow and sleet likely caused the collapse of an awning onto several houseboats. Six people were rescued and 22 were evacuated, Pulaski County officials said.Storm knocks out power and snarls flights As of Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, Santorelli said. The number of customers without power stood at about 1 million, according to poweroutage.us.Tennessee was hardest hit with about 337,000 customers out by midday Sunday, and Louisiana and Mississippi all had more than 100,000 customers in the dark. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were without power in Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama and West Virginia. Some 11,000 flights were canceled Sunday and more than 14,000 delayed, according to the flight tracker flightaware.com. Airports in Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, North Carolina, New York and New Jersey were hit especially hard.At Philadelphia International Airport, inside displays registered scores of canceled flights and few vehicles could be seen arriving Sunday morning. At Reagan National in Washington, virtually all flights were canceled.Bitter cold makes things worse Even once the ice and snow stop falling, the danger will continue, Santorelli warned.”Behind the storm it’s just going to get bitterly cold across basically the entirety of the eastern two-thirds of the nation, east of the Rockies,” she said. That means the ice and snow won’t melt as fast, which could hinder some efforts to restore power and other infrastructure.Video below: Listen as ice-covered trees crack in MississippiAlong the Gulf Coast, temperatures were balmy Sunday, hitting the high 60s and low 70s, but thermometers were expected to drop into the high 20s and low 30s there by Monday morning. The National Weather Service warned of damaging winds and a slight risk of severe storms and possibly even a brief tornado.In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people who died were found outside as temperatures plunged Saturday before the snows arrived in earnest, though the cause of their deaths remained under investigation.The Democrat pleaded with New Yorkers to stay inside and off roads: “We want every single New Yorker to make it through this storm.”Two men died of hypothermia related to the storm in Caddo Parish in Louisiana, according to the state health department there.Across the affected areas, officials announced that school would be canceled or held remotely Monday.Recovery could take a while In Oxford, Mississippi, police on Sunday morning used social media to tell residents to stay home as the danger of being outside was too great. Local utility crews were also pulled from their jobs during the overnight hours.”Due to life-threatening conditions, Oxford Utilities has made the difficult decision to pull our crews off the road for the night,” the utility company posted on Facebook early Sunday. “Trees are actively snapping and falling around our linemen while they are in the bucket trucks.”Tippah Electric Power in Mississippi said there was “catastrophic damage” and that it could be “weeks instead of days” to restore everyone.The Tennessee Valley Authority provides power to some utilities across the region, and spokesperson Scott Brooks said the bulk power system remains stable but overnight icing had caused power interruptions in north Mississippi, north Alabama, southern middle Tennessee and the Knoxville, Tennessee, area.Icy roads made travel dangerous in north Georgia, where the Cherokee County Sheriff’s office posted on Facebook, “You know it’s bad when Waffle House is closed!!!” along with a photo of a shuttered restaurant. Whether the chain’s restaurants are open — known as the Waffle House Index — has become an informal way to gauge the severity of weather disasters across the South.

    A massive winter storm dumped sleet, freezing rain and snow across much of the U.S. on Sunday, bringing subzero temperatures and paralyzing air and road traffic. Tree branches and power lines snapped under the weight of ice, and about a million homes and businesses in the Southeast were left without electricity.

    The ice and snowfall were expected to continue into Monday in much of the country, followed by very low temperatures, which could cause “dangerous travel and infrastructure impacts” to linger for several days, the National Weather Service said.

    Heavy snow was forecast from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast, while “catastrophic ice accumulation” threatened from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.

    “It is a unique storm in the sense that it is so widespread,” weather service meteorologist Allison Santorelli said in a phone interview. “It was affecting areas all the way from New Mexico, Texas, all the way into New England, so we’re talking like a 2,000 mile spread.”

    President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned commodities, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.

    New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the state was bracing for the longest cold stretch and highest snow totals it has seen in years. Communities near the Canadian border have already seen record-breaking subzero temperatures, with Watertown registering minus 34 degrees Fahrenheit and Copenhagen minus 49 F, she said.

    “An Arctic siege has taken over our state,” Hochul said. “It is brutal, it is bone chilling and it is dangerous.”

    Effects of the storm

    In Corinth, Mississippi, where power outages were widespread, Caterpillar told employees at its remanufacturing site to stay home Monday and Tuesday.

    “May God have mercy on Corinth, MS! … The sound of the trees snapping, exploding & falling through the night have been unnerving to say the least,” resident Kathy Ragan wrote on Facebook.

    Video below: Dashcam captures moment tree falls from weight of ice in North Louisiana

    On the east side of Nashville, Jami Joe, 41, had power Sunday afternoon but she feared the juice might not last long as ice-heavy limbs from mature oak and pecan trees continued to crash around her house. “It’s only a matter of time if a limb strikes a power line,” she predicted.

    In Little Rock, Arkansas, officials say the weight of accumulated snow and sleet likely caused the collapse of an awning onto several houseboats. Six people were rescued and 22 were evacuated, Pulaski County officials said.

    Storm knocks out power and snarls flights

    As of Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, Santorelli said. The number of customers without power stood at about 1 million, according to poweroutage.us.

    Tennessee was hardest hit with about 337,000 customers out by midday Sunday, and Louisiana and Mississippi all had more than 100,000 customers in the dark. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were without power in Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama and West Virginia.

    Some 11,000 flights were canceled Sunday and more than 14,000 delayed, according to the flight tracker flightaware.com. Airports in Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, North Carolina, New York and New Jersey were hit especially hard.

    At Philadelphia International Airport, inside displays registered scores of canceled flights and few vehicles could be seen arriving Sunday morning. At Reagan National in Washington, virtually all flights were canceled.

    Bitter cold makes things worse

    Even once the ice and snow stop falling, the danger will continue, Santorelli warned.

    “Behind the storm it’s just going to get bitterly cold across basically the entirety of the eastern two-thirds of the nation, east of the Rockies,” she said. That means the ice and snow won’t melt as fast, which could hinder some efforts to restore power and other infrastructure.

    Video below: Listen as ice-covered trees crack in Mississippi

    Along the Gulf Coast, temperatures were balmy Sunday, hitting the high 60s and low 70s, but thermometers were expected to drop into the high 20s and low 30s there by Monday morning. The National Weather Service warned of damaging winds and a slight risk of severe storms and possibly even a brief tornado.

    In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people who died were found outside as temperatures plunged Saturday before the snows arrived in earnest, though the cause of their deaths remained under investigation.

    The Democrat pleaded with New Yorkers to stay inside and off roads: “We want every single New Yorker to make it through this storm.”

    Two men died of hypothermia related to the storm in Caddo Parish in Louisiana, according to the state health department there.

    Across the affected areas, officials announced that school would be canceled or held remotely Monday.

    Recovery could take a while

    In Oxford, Mississippi, police on Sunday morning used social media to tell residents to stay home as the danger of being outside was too great. Local utility crews were also pulled from their jobs during the overnight hours.

    “Due to life-threatening conditions, Oxford Utilities has made the difficult decision to pull our crews off the road for the night,” the utility company posted on Facebook early Sunday. “Trees are actively snapping and falling around our linemen while they are in the bucket trucks.”

    Tippah Electric Power in Mississippi said there was “catastrophic damage” and that it could be “weeks instead of days” to restore everyone.

    The Tennessee Valley Authority provides power to some utilities across the region, and spokesperson Scott Brooks said the bulk power system remains stable but overnight icing had caused power interruptions in north Mississippi, north Alabama, southern middle Tennessee and the Knoxville, Tennessee, area.

    Icy roads made travel dangerous in north Georgia, where the Cherokee County Sheriff’s office posted on Facebook, “You know it’s bad when Waffle House is closed!!!” along with a photo of a shuttered restaurant. Whether the chain’s restaurants are open — known as the Waffle House Index — has become an informal way to gauge the severity of weather disasters across the South.

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  • Why freezing rain has millions at risk of losing power — and heat

    ATLANTA — Every morning this week, Newberry Electric Cooperative CEO Keith Avery walks into his office and turns on The Weather Channel. Then he starts making calls, lining up crews and equipment to respond to outages if a forecasted ice storm cripples power across South Carolina.

    Avery has dealt with disasters before. Nearly every one of his 14,000 customers lost power when the remnants of Hurricane Helene tore through in 2024.

    But the approaching ice storm has him even more worried because ice-coated trees and power lines can keep falling long after the storm itself has passed.

    “I hate ice storms,” Avery said. “They are worse than hurricanes.”

    Officials across the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. have been sounding the alarm about the potential for freezing rain to wreak havoc on power systems. In the South, especially, losing electricity doesn’t just mean the lights going out. It means losing heat.

    That’s because a majority of homes are heated by electricity in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

    Ice storms, Avery said, are especially punishing because of what happens after they move out: Crews struggle to reach damaged lines on ice-covered roads; cold, wet weather takes a toll on workers; and problems can linger for days as ice-laden branches continue to snap.

    “You get a power line back up and energized, and just as you leave, you hear a loud crack and boom, there’s a tree limb crashing through what you just repaired,” Avery said.

    Texas experienced the worst-case scenario in 2021, when Winter Storm Uri’s freezing temperatures crippled the state’s power grid for five days and led to 246 storm-related deaths, according to the Texas Department of Health Services.

    But experts say Uri’s damage stemmed largely from poorly weatherized power plants and natural gas systems, not downed power lines.

    “The main lesson was to enforce requirements for utilities to be ready for cold weather,” said Georg Rute, CEO of Gridraven, a Texas-based firm that analyzes power system risks for grid operators.

    Rute said utilities have applied lessons from Uri, and while he does not expect a repeat of that kind of grid collapse, he warned that other vulnerabilities remain, including transmission lines tripping during extreme cold.

    Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday gave assurances to Texans about the state’s power grid. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has said grid conditions are expected to be normal during this weekend’s storm.

    “The ERCOT grid has never been stronger, never been more prepared, and is fully capable of handling this winter storm,” Abbott said.

    The governor added, though, that residents could lose power as ice weighs down power lines and trees fall onto them. But, he said, energy providers are prepositioned to fix any outages, and there’s been an effort to clear trees and branches near power lines in recent years.

    Winter Storm Uri also exposed disparities in how outages affected communities, said Jennifer Laird, a sociology professor at the City University of New York’s Lehman College who studies energy insecurity. Researchers have found that residents in predominantly Hispanic areas experienced more outages, while Black residents were more likely to face outages lasting a day or more.

    Laird said outages expose vulnerabilities people don’t anticipate, from medical equipment that requires electricity to families with infants who rely on refrigeration for breast milk. Younger households and those with lower levels of education, in particular, are less likely to have contingency plans in place, she said.

    “There are lots of ways that we’re dependent on energy that we don’t realize until a crisis hits — and then it really exposes those vulnerabilities,” Laird said.

    Even if this weekend’s storm does not produce significant outages, the financial burden on families could linger for months. About 1 in 6 U.S. households are already behind on their energy bills, and with millions expected to turn up their heaters during the cold snap, that number could rise, Laird said.

    “A month or two after the storm hits, suddenly the bill hits,” she said. “We could see a rise in disconnection notices and disconnections.”

    Utilities in the Southeast have also warned customers to prepare for possible outages. Duke Energy, which serves more than 4.6 million customers in North and South Carolina, urged residents to be ready for multiple days without power. The utility said more than 18,000 workers would be ready to respond once conditions are safe.

    The Tennessee Valley Authority, which serves more than 10 million people across seven states, said it has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in weatherization since a 2022 winter storm and has built-in redundancies to reroute power if a line goes down.

    “It takes a lot of snow and ice to down one of those big lines,” TVA spokesperson Scott Brooks said.

    ___

    Collins reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Associated Press writers Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee; Gary Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina; and Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed to this report.

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  • Trump administration scraps multimillion-dollar

    SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has canceled solar projects in Puerto Rico worth millions of dollars, as the island struggles with chronic power outages and a crumbling electric grid.

    The projects were aimed at helping 30,000 low-income families in rural areas across the U.S. territory as part of a now-fading transition toward renewable energy.

    In an email obtained by The Associated Press, the U.S. Energy Department said that a push under Puerto Rico’s former governor for a 100% renewable future threatened the reliability of its energy system.

    “The Puerto Rico grid cannot afford to run on more distributed solar power,” the message states. “The rapid, widespread deployment of rooftop solar has created fluctuations in Puerto Rico’s grid, leading to unacceptable instability and fragility.”

    Javier Rúa Jovet, public policy director for Puerto Rico’s Solar and Energy Storage Association, disputed that statement in a phone interview Thursday.

    He said that some 200,000 families across Puerto Rico rely on solar power that generates close to 1.4 gigawatts of energy a day for the rest of the island.

    “That’s helping avoid blackouts,” he said, adding that the inverters of those systems also help regulate fluctuations across the grid.

    He said he was saddened by the cancellation of the solar projects. “It’s a tragedy, honestly,” he said. “These are funds for the most needy.”

    Earlier this month, the Energy Department canceled three programs, including one worth $400 million, that would have seen solar and battery storage systems installed in low-income homes and those with medical needs.

    In its email, the department said that on Jan. 9, it would reallocate up to $350 million from private distributed solar systems to support fixes to improve the generation of power in Puerto Rico. It wasn’t immediately clear if that funding has been allocated.

    One of those programs would have financed solar projects for 150 low-income households on the tiny Puerto Rican island of Culebra.

    “The people are really upset and angry,” said Dan Whittle, an associate vice president with the Environmental Defense Fund, which was overseeing that project. “They’re seeing other people keep the lights on during these power outages, and they’re not sure why they’re not included.”

    He noted that a privately funded project helped install solar panels and batteries on 45 homes a week before Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico in September 2022.

    Whittle said he was baffled by the federal government’s decision.

    “They are buying hook, line and sinker that solar is the problem. It could not be more wrong,” he said.

    The solar projects were part of an initial $1 billion fund created by U.S. Congress in 2022 under former President Joe Biden to help boost energy resilience in Puerto Rico, which is still trying to recover from Hurricane Maria.

    The Category 4 storm slammed into the island in September 2017, razing an electric grid already weakened by a lack of maintenance and investment. Outages have persisted since then, with massive blackouts hitting on New Year’s Eve in 2024 and during Holy Week last year.

    In recent years, residents and businesses that could afford to do so have embraced solar energy on an island of 3.2 million people with a more than 40% poverty rate.

    But more than 60% of energy on the island is still generated by petroleum-fired power plants, 24% by natural gas, 8% by coal and 7% by renewables, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

    The cancellation of the solar projects comes a month after the administration of Puerto Rico Gov. Jenniffer González sued Luma Energy, a private company overseeing the transmission and distribution of power on the island.

    At the time, González said that the electrical system “has not improved with the speed, consistency or effectiveness that Puerto Rico deserves.”

    The fragility of Puerto Rico’s energy system is further exacerbated by a struggle to restructure a more than $9 billion debt held by the island’s Electric Power Authority, which has failed to reach an agreement with creditors.

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  • Verizon outage disrupts calling and data services for wireless customers across the US

    Many Verizon customers are experiencing a major outage on Wednesday, disrupting calling and cellular services across the U.S. The New York-based carrier has acknowledged an issue impacting wireless voice and data services

    NEW YORK — Many Verizon customers encountered a widespread outage on Wednesday, disrupting calling and other cellular services across the U.S.

    The carrier acknowledged that there was an “issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers.” Verizon didn’t specify what was causing the disruptions, but said in updates shared on social media that it had deployed its engineering teams and was working to resolve the problem “as quickly as possible.”

    Outage tracker Downdetector showed that Verizon customers began to report issues with their service around noon E.T. Reports appeared to peak in the early afternoon and remained elevated later in the day — sitting close to 33,000 as of 8:00 p.m. ET.

    Impacted users said their phones were in “SOS” mode or had other no signal messages. In New York, alerts warned that the outage may disrupt 911 calls — urging residents to try landlines and devices from other carriers, if available, or visit a local police or fire station in-person in case of an emergency.

    Per Downdetector, other major hubs impacted by Verizon’s outage included Washington D.C., Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Atlanta. But consumers across the country said they were experiencing disruptions.

    A handful of outage reports for other carriers also bubbled up on Wednesday — but companies like T-Mobile and AT&T quickly confirmed online that their services were operating normally. Both suggested that their customers may be encountering issues contacting people with Verizon’s service, however.

    When cellular outages happen, some phone companies also urge consumers to try to connect to Wi-Fi and use internet calling. If Wi-Fi is still unavailable, there can be a limited number of other options — including sending messages via satellite on newer iPhones.

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  • Dark Christmas: Family shares how Bay Area outages impacted holiday plans

    Some residents shared their experiences after storm-related damage left thousands in the Bay Area without power this week, impacting holiday celebrations.

    The utility agency said Thursday winds topping 92 mph caused widespread outages, with the counties of Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Mateo and Sonoma being the hardest hit.

    In San Bruno, the wind blew down a tree on a power line. The Spitzigs were one of the families affected by the outage; they say they have been in the dark for two days, not just because the lights are out, but because they had no clue when they’d come back on.

    Jonathan Bloom has the full report in the video player above.

    Jonathan Bloom

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  • El Dorado Hills residents prepare for strong winds and possible power outages

    Residents of El Dorado Hills are preparing for strong winds expected to last through Christmas Day, with concerns about potential power outages in the area. Josh McGee expressed confidence in his Christmas-themed skeleton decoration, saying, “I got faith in Skully. He’s made it through a couple of winters with us already, so I have faith in him. The hat might be gone, but we’ll get it back.”McGee’s giant skeleton sits in the front yard of his El Dorado Hills home wearing a Santa hat and scarf.His neighbor Tom Molyneux-Elliot said that he is reconsidering his decision to put out the trash early, saying, “I might be picking up garbage in the morning.”Despite the subtle jokes from these two, the anticipated strong gusts have put residents on high alert for possible power outages. “I have generators and everything, but, you know, PG&E is notoriously unreliable during this kind of situation,” McGee said. “They don’t have the best track record of keeping power on.”Molyneux-Elliot added, “We used to lose power a lot, but the last couple of years, it’s been better. Hopefully, that won’t happen again this year. But I know up the hill it definitely gets a little worse.”PG&E has assured residents that they are fully staffed and have crews ready to respond to any outages caused by the high winds. Jeff Weeks from Ace Hardware at Town Center reported a steady flow of customers preparing for the storm. “We didn’t anticipate quite the run on things we have here,” he said. The lighting section shelves were bare on Tuesday night, and Weeks mentioned that the store plans to stay open on Christmas Eve for those who might need supplies during the storm.”Come in early, get the things that you think you’re going to need,” he advised. He emphasized the importance of being prepared with “generators, candles, lights, flashlights, huge things, batteries, we have all those kinds of things.”See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. —

    Residents of El Dorado Hills are preparing for strong winds expected to last through Christmas Day, with concerns about potential power outages in the area.

    Josh McGee expressed confidence in his Christmas-themed skeleton decoration, saying, “I got faith in Skully. He’s made it through a couple of winters with us already, so I have faith in him. The hat might be gone, but we’ll get it back.”

    McGee’s giant skeleton sits in the front yard of his El Dorado Hills home wearing a Santa hat and scarf.

    His neighbor Tom Molyneux-Elliot said that he is reconsidering his decision to put out the trash early, saying, “I might be picking up garbage in the morning.”

    Despite the subtle jokes from these two, the anticipated strong gusts have put residents on high alert for possible power outages.

    “I have generators and everything, but, you know, PG&E is notoriously unreliable during this kind of situation,” McGee said. “They don’t have the best track record of keeping power on.”

    Molyneux-Elliot added, “We used to lose power a lot, but the last couple of years, it’s been better. Hopefully, that won’t happen again this year. But I know up the hill it definitely gets a little worse.”

    PG&E has assured residents that they are fully staffed and have crews ready to respond to any outages caused by the high winds.

    Jeff Weeks from Ace Hardware at Town Center reported a steady flow of customers preparing for the storm.

    “We didn’t anticipate quite the run on things we have here,” he said.

    The lighting section shelves were bare on Tuesday night, and Weeks mentioned that the store plans to stay open on Christmas Eve for those who might need supplies during the storm.

    “Come in early, get the things that you think you’re going to need,” he advised.

    He emphasized the importance of being prepared with “generators, candles, lights, flashlights, huge things, batteries, we have all those kinds of things.”

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • San Francisco outages leaves 130,000 without power

    A massive outage knocked out power to 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco on Saturday, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said.

    The power failure left a large swath of the northern part of the city in the dark, beginning with the Richmond and Presidio neighborhoods and areas around Golden Gate Park in the early afternoon and growing in size.

    PG&E did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the cause of the blackouts. The outage represents roughly one-third of the utility company’s customers in the city.

    Social media posts and local media reported mass closures of restaurants and shops and darkened street lights and Christmas decorations.

    The San Francisco Department of Emergency Management said on X there were “significant transit disruptions” happening citywide and urged residents to avoid nonessential travel and treat down traffic signals as four-way stops.

    The city’s transportation agencies said they were bypassing some Muni bus and BART train stations because of the power outages.

    At least some of the blackouts were caused by a fire that broke out inside a PG&E substation at 8th and Mission streets, fire officials posted on X at about 3:15 p.m.

    At about 4 p.m., PG&E posted on X that it had stabilized the power grid and was not expecting additional customer outages. The company said it was unable to confirm if power would be restored by later Saturday.

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  • Cloudflare resolves outage that impacted thousands, ChatGPT, X and more

    A widely used Internet infrastructure company said that it has resolved an issue that led to outages impacting users of everything from ChatGPT and the online game, “League of Legends,” to the New Jersey Transit system early Tuesday.

    At 12:44 p.m. EST, Cloudflare said its engineers no longer saw some of the issues plaguing its customers, but that they were continuing to monitor for any further problems.

    Others platforms that experienced outages Tuesday included the social media site X, Shopify, Dropbox, Coinbase, and the Moody’s credit ratings service. Moody’s website displayed an Error Code 500 and instructed individuals to visit Cloudflare’s website for more information.

    New Jersey Transit said parts of its digital services including njtransit.com, may be temporarily unavailable or slow to load. And New York City Emergency Management said there are reports city services being impacted by the outage. The city is continuing to monitor for disruptions.

    In France, national railway company SNCF’s website has been affected. The company warned customers that “some information and schedules may not be available or up to date. Our teams are working to restore these services as quickly as possible.”

    Cloudflare, based in San Francisco, works behind the scenes to make the internet faster and safer, but when problems flare up “it results in massive digital gridlock” for internet users, cybersecurity expert Mike Chapple said.

    While most people think there’s a direct line between their digital device and a website, what actually happens is that companies like Cloudflare sits in the middle of those connections, he said.

    Cloudflare is a “content delivery network” that takes content from 20% of the world’s websites and mirrors them on thousands of servers worldwide, said Chapple, an information technology professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.

    “When you access a website protected by Cloudflare, your computer doesn’t connect directly to that site,” Chapple said. “Instead, it connects to the nearest Cloudflare server, which might be very close to your home. That protects the website from a flood of traffic, and it provides you with a faster response. It’s a win-win for everyone, until it fails, and 20% of the internet goes down at the same time.”

    Last month Microsoft had to deploy a fix to address an outage of their Azure cloud portal that left users unable to access Office 365, Minecraft and other services. The tech company wrote on its Azure status page that a configuration change to its Azure infrastructure caused the outage.

    And Amazon experienced a massive outage of its cloud computing service in October. The company resolved the issue, but the outage took down a broad range of online services, including social media, gaming, food delivery, streaming and financial platforms.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Kelvin Chan in London and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.

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  • Hurricane Melissa leaves 25 dead in Haiti, causes widespread damage in Jamaica and Cuba

    Hurricane Melissa brought dangerous flooding and storm surge to Cuba on Wednesday after leaving Jamaica with widespread power outages and causing flooding that killed 25 people in Haiti, officials say.Jean Bertrand Subrème, mayor of the southern Haitian coastal town of Petit-Goâve, told The Associated Press that 25 people died after La Digue river burst its banks and flooded nearby homes.Dozens of homes collapsed and people were still trapped under rubble as of Wednesday morning, he said.“I am overwhelmed by the situation,” he said as he pleaded with the government to help rescue victims.Only one official from Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency was in the area, with residents struggling to evacuate amid heavy floodwaters unleashed by Hurricane Melissa in recent days.At least one death was reported in Jamaica, where Melissa roared ashore Tuesday with top sustained winds of 185 mph, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record. A tree fell on a baby in the island nation’s west, state minister Abka Fitz-Henley told local radio station Nationwide News Network, adding that most destruction was concentrated in the southwest and northwest.“That was hell. All night long, it was terrible,” said Reinaldo Charon in Santiago de Cuba. The 52-year-old was one of the few people venturing out Wednesday, covered by a plastic sheet in the intermittent rain.Parts of Granma province, especially the municipal capital, Jiguaní, were underwater, said Gov. Yanetsy Terry Gutiérrez. More than 15 inches of rain was reported in Jiguaní’s settlement of Charco Redondo.Officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads and roofs blown off. Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters in eastern Cuba. Melissa had top sustained winds of 100 mph, a Category 2 storm, and was moving northeast at 14 mph according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. The hurricane was centered about 150 miles south of the central Bahamas.Melissa was forecast to continue weakening as it crossed Cuba but remain strong as it moves across the southeastern or central Bahamas later Wednesday. It was expected to make its way late Thursday near or to the west of Bermuda. Haiti and the Turks and Caicos also braced for its effects.The storm was expected to generate a surge of up to 12 feet in the region and drop up to 20 inches of rain in parts of eastern Cuba. Intense rain could cause life-threatening flooding with numerous landslides, U.S. forecasters said.Jamaica rushes to assess the damageJamaican officials reported complications in assessing the damage, while the National Hurricane Center said the local government had lifted the tropical storm warning.“There’s a total communication blackout on that side,” Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network. More than half a million customers were without power late Tuesday.Extensive damage was reported in parts of Clarendon in the south and in the southwestern parish of St. Elizabeth, which was “underwater,” said Desmond McKenzie, deputy chairman of Jamaica’s Disaster Risk Management Council. He said the storm damaged four hospitals and left one without power, forcing officials to evacuate 75 patients.Video above: Jamaican police station turned into shelter in hard-hit areaSanta Cruz town in St. Elizabeth parish was devastated. A landslide blocked main roads. Streets were reduced to mud pits. Residents swept water from homes as they tried to salvage belongings. Winds ripped off part of the roof at St. Elizabeth Technical High School, a designated public shelter.“I never see anything like this before in all my years living here,” resident Jennifer Small said.“The entire hillside came down last night,” said another resident, Robert James.The government said it hopes to reopen all of Jamaica’s airports as early as Thursday to ensure quick distribution of emergency relief supplies.The U.S. government said it was deploying a disaster response team and search and rescue personnel to the region. And the State Department said non-emergency personnel and family members of U.S. government employees were authorized to leave Jamaica because of the storm’s impact.

    SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba —

    Hurricane Melissa brought dangerous flooding and storm surge to Cuba on Wednesday after leaving Jamaica with widespread power outages and causing flooding that killed 25 people in Haiti, officials say.

    Jean Bertrand Subrème, mayor of the southern Haitian coastal town of Petit-Goâve, told The Associated Press that 25 people died after La Digue river burst its banks and flooded nearby homes.

    Dozens of homes collapsed and people were still trapped under rubble as of Wednesday morning, he said.

    “I am overwhelmed by the situation,” he said as he pleaded with the government to help rescue victims.

    Only one official from Haiti’s Civil Protection Agency was in the area, with residents struggling to evacuate amid heavy floodwaters unleashed by Hurricane Melissa in recent days.

    At least one death was reported in Jamaica, where Melissa roared ashore Tuesday with top sustained winds of 185 mph, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record. A tree fell on a baby in the island nation’s west, state minister Abka Fitz-Henley told local radio station Nationwide News Network, adding that most destruction was concentrated in the southwest and northwest.

    “That was hell. All night long, it was terrible,” said Reinaldo Charon in Santiago de Cuba. The 52-year-old was one of the few people venturing out Wednesday, covered by a plastic sheet in the intermittent rain.

    Parts of Granma province, especially the municipal capital, Jiguaní, were underwater, said Gov. Yanetsy Terry Gutiérrez. More than 15 inches of rain was reported in Jiguaní’s settlement of Charco Redondo.

    Officials reported collapsed houses, blocked mountain roads and roofs blown off. Authorities said about 735,000 people remained in shelters in eastern Cuba.

    Melissa had top sustained winds of 100 mph, a Category 2 storm, and was moving northeast at 14 mph according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. The hurricane was centered about 150 miles south of the central Bahamas.

    Melissa was forecast to continue weakening as it crossed Cuba but remain strong as it moves across the southeastern or central Bahamas later Wednesday. It was expected to make its way late Thursday near or to the west of Bermuda. Haiti and the Turks and Caicos also braced for its effects.

    The storm was expected to generate a surge of up to 12 feet in the region and drop up to 20 inches of rain in parts of eastern Cuba. Intense rain could cause life-threatening flooding with numerous landslides, U.S. forecasters said.

    Jamaica rushes to assess the damage

    Jamaican officials reported complications in assessing the damage, while the National Hurricane Center said the local government had lifted the tropical storm warning.

    “There’s a total communication blackout on that side,” Richard Thompson, acting director general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, told the Nationwide News Network. More than half a million customers were without power late Tuesday.

    Extensive damage was reported in parts of Clarendon in the south and in the southwestern parish of St. Elizabeth, which was “underwater,” said Desmond McKenzie, deputy chairman of Jamaica’s Disaster Risk Management Council. He said the storm damaged four hospitals and left one without power, forcing officials to evacuate 75 patients.

    Video above: Jamaican police station turned into shelter in hard-hit area

    intensity models show how strong the storm is forecast to become

    Santa Cruz town in St. Elizabeth parish was devastated. A landslide blocked main roads. Streets were reduced to mud pits. Residents swept water from homes as they tried to salvage belongings. Winds ripped off part of the roof at St. Elizabeth Technical High School, a designated public shelter.

    “I never see anything like this before in all my years living here,” resident Jennifer Small said.

    “The entire hillside came down last night,” said another resident, Robert James.

    The government said it hopes to reopen all of Jamaica’s airports as early as Thursday to ensure quick distribution of emergency relief supplies.

    The U.S. government said it was deploying a disaster response team and search and rescue personnel to the region. And the State Department said non-emergency personnel and family members of U.S. government employees were authorized to leave Jamaica because of the storm’s impact.

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  • Jamaica braces for catastrophic damage as Category 5 Hurricane Melissa approaches

    Hurricane Melissa was set to pummel Jamaica on Tuesday as a catastrophic Category 5 storm, the strongest to lash the island since record-keeping began 174 years ago.The storm was expected to make landfall early Tuesday and slice diagonally across the island, entering near St. Elizabeth parish in the south and exiting around St. Ann parish in the north, forecasters said.Hours before the storm, the government said it had done all it could to prepare as it warned of catastrophic damage.“There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said. “The question now is the speed of recovery. That’s the challenge.”Landslides, fallen trees and numerous power outages were reported ahead of the storm, with officials in Jamaica cautioning that the cleanup and damage assessment would be slow.A life-threatening storm surge of up to 13 feet is expected across southern Jamaica, with officials concerned about the impact on some hospitals along the coastline. Health Minister Christopher Tufton said some patients were relocated from the ground floor to the second floor, “and (we) hope that will suffice for any surge that will take place.”The storm already was blamed for seven deaths in the Caribbean, including three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic, where another person remains missing. Jamaica braces for catastrophic damageMelissa was centered about 115 miles southwest of Kingston and about 290 miles southwest of Guantánamo, Cuba. The system had maximum sustained winds of 175 mph and was moving north-northeast at 5 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.“We will get through it together,” said Evan Thompson, principal director at Jamaica’s meteorological service.Colin Bogle, a Mercy Corps adviser based near Kingston, said most families are sheltering in place despite the government ordering evacuations in flood-prone communities.“Many have never experienced anything like this before, and the uncertainty is frightening,” he said. “There is profound fear of losing homes and livelihoods, of injury, and of displacement.”Matthew Samuda, Jamaica’s water and environment minister, said he had more than 50 generators available to deploy after the storm, but warned people to set aside clean water and use it sparingly.“Every drop will count,” he said.Melissa takes aim at CubaMelissa also was expected to make landfall in eastern Cuba late Tuesday as a powerful hurricane.A hurricane warning was in effect for Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo and Holguin provinces, while a tropical storm warning was in effect for Las Tunas. Up to 20 inches of rain were forecast for parts of Cuba, along with a significant storm surge along the coast.Cuban officials said Monday that they were evacuating more than 600,000 people from the region, including Santiago, the island’s second-largest city.Melissa also has drenched the southern regions of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with a tropical storm warning still in effect for Haiti.The hurricane was forecast to turn northeast after Cuba and strike the southeast Bahamas by Wednesday evening.A hurricane warning was in effect for the southeastern and central Bahamas, and a tropical storm warning was issued for the Turks and Caicos Islands.

    PORT ROYAL, Kingston Parish —

    Hurricane Melissa was set to pummel Jamaica on Tuesday as a catastrophic Category 5 storm, the strongest to lash the island since record-keeping began 174 years ago.

    The storm was expected to make landfall early Tuesday and slice diagonally across the island, entering near St. Elizabeth parish in the south and exiting around St. Ann parish in the north, forecasters said.

    Hours before the storm, the government said it had done all it could to prepare as it warned of catastrophic damage.

    “There is no infrastructure in the region that can withstand a Category 5,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said. “The question now is the speed of recovery. That’s the challenge.”

    Landslides, fallen trees and numerous power outages were reported ahead of the storm, with officials in Jamaica cautioning that the cleanup and damage assessment would be slow.

    A life-threatening storm surge of up to 13 feet is expected across southern Jamaica, with officials concerned about the impact on some hospitals along the coastline. Health Minister Christopher Tufton said some patients were relocated from the ground floor to the second floor, “and (we) hope that will suffice for any surge that will take place.”

    The storm already was blamed for seven deaths in the Caribbean, including three in Jamaica, three in Haiti and one in the Dominican Republic, where another person remains missing.

    Hearst OwnedHearst Television

    Jamaica braces for catastrophic damage

    Melissa was centered about 115 miles southwest of Kingston and about 290 miles southwest of Guantánamo, Cuba. The system had maximum sustained winds of 175 mph and was moving north-northeast at 5 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

    “We will get through it together,” said Evan Thompson, principal director at Jamaica’s meteorological service.

    Colin Bogle, a Mercy Corps adviser based near Kingston, said most families are sheltering in place despite the government ordering evacuations in flood-prone communities.

    “Many have never experienced anything like this before, and the uncertainty is frightening,” he said. “There is profound fear of losing homes and livelihoods, of injury, and of displacement.”

    Matthew Samuda, Jamaica’s water and environment minister, said he had more than 50 generators available to deploy after the storm, but warned people to set aside clean water and use it sparingly.

    “Every drop will count,” he said.

    hurricane

    intensity models show how strong the storm is forecast to become

    Melissa takes aim at Cuba

    Melissa also was expected to make landfall in eastern Cuba late Tuesday as a powerful hurricane.

    A hurricane warning was in effect for Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo and Holguin provinces, while a tropical storm warning was in effect for Las Tunas. Up to 20 inches of rain were forecast for parts of Cuba, along with a significant storm surge along the coast.

    Cuban officials said Monday that they were evacuating more than 600,000 people from the region, including Santiago, the island’s second-largest city.

    Melissa also has drenched the southern regions of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with a tropical storm warning still in effect for Haiti.

    The hurricane was forecast to turn northeast after Cuba and strike the southeast Bahamas by Wednesday evening.

    A hurricane warning was in effect for the southeastern and central Bahamas, and a tropical storm warning was issued for the Turks and Caicos Islands.

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  • Houston neighbors opt for solar-powered ‘hub homes’

    HOUSTON — Doris Brown was nearly asleep when a neighbor knocked on her door, telling her to look outside. “There were no lights, nowhere,” said Brown, recalling the power outage that summer night in 2023. “I didn’t even know it.”

    Brown’s solar panel and battery system was keeping her power on. She’d prepared for a night like this. “Call everybody,” she told the neighbor.

    Soon around 15 “neighbors and neighbors’ neighbors” were inside Brown’s three-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath home in Northeast Houston. They charged phones, cooked, and showered before work and school. Some slept over.

    “There were people sleeping everywhere,” said Brown, 75. She was happy to be “a port in a storm,” despite one downside: “They ate all my snacks.”

    Brown’s house is a “hub home,” one of seven in a Northeast Houston pilot program meant to create emergency safe havens — not at shelters or community centers, but inside neighbors’ houses.

    The idea was a grassroots response to decades of community disinvestment and neglect that got neighbors talking about what they could do to be ready for extreme weather and power outages.

    “It’s us helping us,” said Brown.

    The project was set to reach 30 more homes, until the Environmental Protection Agency in August canceled the $7 billion Solar for All program which would have funded its expansion. Harris County, which includes Houston, is now a plaintiff in one of multiple lawsuits over the cancellation.

    People involved with the program acknowledge hub homes are unconventional — requiring trust and community cooperation and impacting fewer people than a larger resilience center.

    But they also say they’re effective in creating pockets of preparedness in communities confronting more extreme weather but lacking resources to do more.

    “It was a way to increase resilience in those neighborhoods that are often forgotten,” said Sam Silerio, Texas program director at Solar United Neighbors, one of the nonprofits involved with the pilot program which is also suing over the cuts.

    The hub homes idea started after Winter Storm Uri in 2021, when freezing temperatures crippled Texas’ power grid for five days and led to 246 storm-related deaths, according to the Texas Department of Health Services.

    Power loss contributed to many of the deaths, as people with health conditions couldn’t refrigerate medicines or run life-sustaining medical devices. Nineteen people died from carbon monoxide poisoning from improperly using generators and grills to stay warm.

    “We were like, ‘Shoot, power grid failure is a serious thing that we are not prepared for’,” said Becky Selle, co-director of disaster preparedness, organizing, and operations at West Street Recovery, a Northeast Houston nonprofit founded after Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

    WSR bought some generators for residents willing to share the resource. Brown, who almost froze to death herself in Uri, stepped up.

    WSR added more supplies to the hubs, like life jackets and kayaks for flood evacuations, and held preparedness trainings for members.

    When the D.C.-based nonprofit Solar United Neighbors approached them with a private grant from the Hive Fund to add free solar panels and batteries to several houses, WSR knew exactly where to install them.

    The pilot had its challenges — some roofs had to be repaired before they could hold solar panels, and hub captains had to learn how to manage their batteries to not deplete them.

    Success also required neighborly connection that modern communities often lack.

    “You have to build that trust,” said David Espinoza, a hub home captain and West Street Recovery’s co-director of community organizing and language access. The 34-year-old went door-to-door on his block, introducing himself to sometimes wary neighbors. “I got to know my neighborhood a lot better,” he said.

    About a dozen people are signed up on Espinoza’s “roster,” but he said the hub is there for anyone in need, prioritizing older neighbors and those with children or medical conditions.

    There are other upsides, too: The solar and battery system reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and cut Espinoza’s utility bill in half.

    Espinoza, who is bilingual, said that for neighborhoods like his with mixed-status, Spanish-speaking, and medically vulnerable households, hub homes are useful even with other shelters nearby.

    “They can access me a little easier,” he said.

    Efforts to bolster local resilience have grown in recent years as extreme weather, power outages, and electricity prices overburden communities.

    Average annual power interruption hours across the U.S. have jumped in the last decade, largely due to extreme weather, according to Sarah Kotwis, senior associate at the clean energy nonprofit RMI.

    “Communities do need to be thinking more strategically about resilience,” said Kotwis.

    That preparedness begins with connections between neighbors, said Renae Hanvin, CEO and founder of Resilient Ready and an expert on “social capital,” or the “connections, trust and cooperation between people.”

    “It’s the missing link in the disaster resilience ecosystem,” said Hanvin. “At the end of the day, the first thing you need (in an emergency) to help you is a person.”

    As disasters worsen, first responders simply can’t help everyone at once, she said, so neighbors must think of themselves as “zero responders.”

    Many communities have also turned to “resilience centers,” or locally trusted institutions like community centers or churches that are outfitted with backup power, emergency supplies, and even year-round social services.

    Ideally, resilience investments aren’t an either-or decision, said Dori Wolfe, SUN senior Texas program associate. “Hub homes are one piece of the web, and there should be a resilience center at the center of each of these nodes,” she said. “We need all of it.”

    Solar United Neighbors and West Street Recovery planned to expand the program this fall as part of a $54 million grant awarded to Harris County by the EPA.

    They intended to grow the number of hub homes to 30, and add more batteries to existing ones to better run heating and air conditioning during outages. The money would have also funded a local resilience center.

    In August, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin canceled the EPA’s Solar for All program, intended to support residential solar for more than 900,000 lower-income households. Zeldin said authority for the “boondoggle” program was eliminated under Trump’s tax-and-spending bill.

    “It’s a huge letdown,” said Silerio. Both Solar United Neighbors and Harris County sued the EPA in separate lawsuits this month over the cuts, as did over a dozen state attorneys general.

    The termination “pulls the rug out from the very people the federal government should be protecting,” Harris County Interim County Administrator Jesse Dickerman said in a statement to The Associated Press.

    West Street Recovery isn’t giving up on more hub homes. The nonprofit intends to fundraise through the community and seek other grants.

    “These programs have been a big help to the community,” said Espinoza. “It’s going to be a lot harder without the funds from the federal government.”

    ————

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Coastal storm warning: NYC under state of emergency with heavy rain, wind and shore flooding expected | amNewYork

    NYC umbrellas will be put to the test by an approaching storm.

    File photo/Dean Moses

    Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency on Sunday for the city’s five boroughs, as a major coastal storm moves into the region.

    The nor’easter is expected to bring isolated coastal flooding along the shore as well as heavy rain — between 1.5 and 3 inches are possible — and wind gusts exceeding 40 mph at times through Monday afternoon.

    The state of emergency enables New York’s government to mobilize and respond quickly to any storm-related emergencies, from power outages to flooding and other related issues. Utility companies such as Con Edison have already dispatched more than 1,600 additional workers across New York City, the Mid-Hudson Valley and Long Island, according to Hochul. 

    Meanwhile, the city is under several storm-related weather advisories and warnings from the National Weather Service, which underscore the expected storm severity.

    A wind advisory is in effect for New York City through 6 p.m. Monday. Sustained winds are expected to reach 20 to 25 mph, with gusts of up to 45 mph at times. Combined with saturated ground from the expected rainfall, the conditions are prime for falling trees and power lines, especially in areas of the city served by overhead wires.

    Visit coned.com or call 800-75-CONED to report any outages or check on the repair status.

    The anticipated wind forecast also led the MTA to ban all empty tractor-trailers from its bridges from 3 p.m. on Sunday until the storm clears. 

    Coastal areas of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island are also under a coastal flood warning until 6 p.m. Monday. Low-lying areas near the shoreline may see inundation of between 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 feet during high tide cycles. The flooding will likely strike basements, parking lots and front lawns.

    Monday’s Columbus Day Parade along 5th Avenue in Midtown was cancelled due to the storm. Because Monday is a legal holiday in New York for Columbus Day, Italian Heritage Day and Indigenous Peoples Day, alternate-side parking rules are suspended.

    Robert Pozarycki

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  • The Taliban government in Afghanistan rejects reports of a nationwide internet ban

    ISLAMABAD — The Taliban government on Wednesday rejected reports of a nationwide internet ban in Afghanistan, saying old fiber optic cables are worn out and are being replaced.

    The announcement was the Taliban’s first public statement on a communications blackout that has disrupted banking, commerce and aviation.

    Several provinces last month confirmed an internet shutdown because of a decree from the Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada to combat immorality.

    “There is nothing like the rumors being spread that we have imposed a ban on the internet,” Taliban officials said in a three-line statement shared in a WhatsApp chat group with Pakistani journalists.

    The statement posted on social media platform X cited Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid saying ongoing nationwide disruptions were the result of “decaying fiber optic infrastructure” that is now being replaced.

    The statement did not say when or if services would be restored.

    The outage was first reported Monday by internet advocacy group Netblocks, which said internet connectivity was collapsing across the country, including in the capital Kabul, and telephone services also were impacted.

    Afghan carrier Kam Air told local TV channel TOLO News it would likely resume flights to Kabul later Wednesday, after fully halting operations since Monday due to the outage.

    Aid officials have warned that humanitarian organizations face major challenges because of the blackout, urging authorities to restore connections.

    “Reliable communications are essential for our ability to operate, to deliver life-saving assistance, and to coordinate with partners,” Save the Children said in a statement Wednesday.

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  • AT&T attributes mass 911 outages in 3 states to fiber cuts made by ‘third parties’

    JACKSON, Miss. — Mass 911 outages that swept across parts of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama on Thursday afternoon were caused by fiber cuts made by “third parties,” according to a statement from AT&T.

    Initial reports of outages were circulating around 2 p.m. in Mississippi. By 4:45 p.m., AT&T reported service had been restored in all three states.

    “911 service continues to operate normally across previously affected areas in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama,” the AT&T statement said. “We understand how important these services are and apologize to our customers for the inconvenience.”

    AT&T also said the outages were “at no time statewide,” contradicting some reports from local authorities.

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  • Optus fined $66 million for ‘appalling’ conduct in sales to telecom’s customers in Australia

    MELBOURNE, Australia — An Australian judge fined telecommunications giant Optus 100 million Australian dollars ($66 million) Wednesday for unconscionable conduct selling services to hundreds of vulnerable customers including in Indigenous communities outside the range of its coverage.

    The subsidiary of Singapore government-owned Singtel is separately facing multimillion-dollar fines over its failure last week to connect hundreds of emergency calls due to an outage that’s been linked to four deaths.

    Federal Court Justice Patrick O’Sullivan approved a plea agreement struck between Optus, Australia’s second-largest telecom, and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission over unconscionable conduct and inappropriate sales practices spanning four years until July 2023.

    He said Optus’ conduct was “extremely serious and can only be described as appalling.”

    “Optus senior management knew, or ought to have known, of the system failures that allowed the unconscionable conduct which may rightly be described as predatory,” O’Sullivan told the court.

    “Of particular concern is the fact that Optus’ conduct predominantly affected vulnerable consumers including people with mental disabilities, people suffering from financial hardship, those with low financial literacy and people with limited English proficiency and/or learning difficulties,” he added.

    Many victims were vulnerable Indigenous people from regional and remote communities, some of whom lived outside the range of Optus mobile coverage.

    Optus sales staff applied undue pressure to customers, fabricated customer details to ensure higher credit approvals for contracts and then engaged debt collectors to recover what was owed.

    Following the ruling, Optus said in a statement it was “remediating impacted customers as a matter of priority.” The statement didn’t detail that remediation.

    Optus would also pay AU$1 million ($660,000) to support digital literacy initiatives for Indigenous Australians.

    When Optus admitted the corporate law breaches in June, chief executive Stephen Rue described them as “inexcusable and unacceptable.”

    The judge’s criticisms came hours after Optus appointed an expert to review the outage Sept. 18 that impacted 631 customers who tried to phone emergency services. Four of those emergencies were fatal.

    Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers said a government inquiry into the outage would investigate whether the parent company Singtel was providing Optus with sufficient money to make emergency calls reliable.

    Singtel chief executive Yuen Kuan Moon said the parent company had invested AU$9.3 billion ($6.2 billion) in Optus in the past five years to build network infrastructure across Australia.

    Singtel “will continue to invest as needed for Optus to provide reliable communication services to all Australians,” Moon said in a statement.

    Rue said Optus investigators have already established that the latest outage was caused by “human error.”

    “It’s not expenditure, it’s process. The standard processes were not followed. That’s not an investment issue. That is people not following processes,” Rue told reporters.

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  • Towering wall of dust rolls through metro Phoenix

    PHOENIX — A towering wall of dust rolled through metro Phoenix on Monday with storms that left tens of thousands of people without power and temporarily grounded flights at the city airport.

    About 39,000 people were without power in Arizona, most of whom were in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, according to PowerOutage.us.

    Motorists hurried home through strong winds and rain as the dust storm, commonly referred to as a haboob, approached. Haboobs are associated with collapsing thunderstorms and strong winds and can make driving on roads nearly impossible.

    The haboob cut visibility to a quarter-mile across metro Phoenix but had cleared up by Monday evening. Phoenix has been drier than usual during the summer rainy season, while parts of southeast and north-central Arizona have had a fair amount of rain, said Mark O’Malley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix.

    “But that’s typical for a monsoon, very hit and miss,” he said.

    The forecast for metro Phoenix calls for a 40% chance of rain Tuesday before drying out, O’Malley said.

    The Arizona Department of Transportation wrote in a post on the social platform X that people should not drive into a dust storm, “But if you’re on the road when one hits, PULL ASIDE, STAY ALIVE!”

    Planes at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport were temporarily grounded due to “extreme weather,” Heather Shelbrack, the airport’s deputy aviation director for public relations, said in an email. By Monday evening, the ground stop had been lifted, with flights delayed about 15 to 30 minutes.

    Traffic lights were also out in neighboring Gilbert, and the storm toppled trees across town, according to the city’s police department.

    ___

    Golden reported from Seattle. Associated Press writer Felicia Fonseca contributed reporting from Flagstaff.

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  • Nearly three-quarters of homeowners are concerned about rapidly rising power costs: ‘American consumers are not taking … rising energy prices lightly’

    If you feel like your energy bills keep climbing, you’re not alone — and you’re not imagining things.

    According to a new EcoFlow-Horowitz survey of homeowners in California, Texas, and Florida, 74% anticipate that the cost of electricity will continue rising in the near future. Meanwhile, 61% say their electric bill is already too high, and 75% are always looking for ways to lower it.

    “American consumers are not taking the rising energy prices lightly,” EcoFlow noted in a statement. “They’re taking stock of the increasing frequency of power outages, the rise in energy prices, and are concerned about the effects of extreme weather.”

    This pressure is especially pronounced among older homeowners and those living in California, where power costs and grid instability are recurring concerns.

    In response, more Americans are turning to solar power as a way to take control of their home energy. According to the same survey, 70% of homeowners have solar panels or are interested in getting them — with cost savings cited as the No. 1 reason.

    Going solar is one of the most effective ways to cut long-term energy expenses while also reducing the pollution that contributes to Earth’s warming. However, the high upfront cost remains a challenge for many families.

    Thankfully, solar leasing programs such as Palmetto’s LightReach initiative help homeowners avoid major upfront payments — sometimes with no money down — while still reaping the benefits of clean, affordable energy.

    “There is tremendous opportunity for increased competition in the market for backup power and solar battery solutions in the United States,” the Horowitz report noted.

    Homeowners want systems that are affordable, easy to use, and reliable, especially as outages become more common and grid prices more volatile.

    If leasing isn’t the best fit for your situation, EnergySage offers a free platform where you can compare quotes for a solar installation and get matched with top-rated local installers.

    How concerned are you about your energy bills increasing this summer?

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    Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

    Installing solar panels is one of the best home energy hacks — it can bring your electricity costs down to or near $0. EnergySage makes it easy to compare quotes and potentially save up to $10,000 on an installation.

    If you’re ready to go solar but are unsure if leasing or buying solar panels is your best option, you can compare the pros and cons on Palmetto’s list.

    You can also swap your HVAC system for a heat pump and save nearly $400 per year. Mitsubishi has affordable, high-efficiency models to help you get started.

    Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don’t miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.

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