As Winter Storm Fern barreled across the United States on January 24, 2026, millions of Americans found themselves at the mercy of nature’s icy grip. The storm, stretching more than 2,300 miles from New Mexico to New England, unleashed a relentless combination of heavy snow, sleet, and significant ice, threatening to disrupt daily life for tens of millions and testing the resilience of the nation’s electric grid and emergency response systems.
According to Electric.coop, electric cooperatives in Texas and neighboring states scrambled to restore thousands of power outages as the storm’s onslaught began. Texas, at the heart of the crisis, recorded about 50,000 outages across all types of electric utilities by midday, with Deep East Texas Electric Cooperative alone reporting more than 7,300 meters out of its 45,000 without power. Bowie-Cass Electric Cooperative in Douglassville faced outages at over 6,000 of its nearly 40,000 meters, while Rusk County Electric Cooperative in Henderson counted more than 6,500 of its 24,000 consumer-members in the dark. Panola-Harrison Electric Cooperative, serving both Texas and Louisiana, reported about 2,100 members without power. In New Mexico, Otero County Electric Cooperative struggled to restore service to roughly 6,000 of its 21,000 members.
“Electric cooperatives are well-versed in safely responding to Mother Nature’s worst and have been preparing for this winter storm for days,” said Jim Matheson, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), in a statement to Electric.coop. “Electric co-ops have been coordinating ahead of the storm to ensure we can respond to potential power outages as quickly and safely as possible, drawing on crews from unaffected areas if needed. We urge consumers to take the storm seriously and prepare for the possibility of extended power outages.”
The primary concern for utilities was the accumulation of ice on power lines and tree limbs. Georgia Electric Membership Corp. warned, “Ice accumulation continues to be the main concern, as ice forming on tree limbs and power lines can cause catastrophic damage to the distribution system.” Fallen trees and hazardous, icy roads further complicated repair efforts, with co-ops cautioning that restoration times would be longer than usual due to dangerous conditions. Bowie-Cass Electric Cooperative relayed, “Roads and other surfaces are icy and hazardous, which may impact travel times and outage location access. Our crews are working as quickly and safely as possible to restore power to all affected members, but please keep in mind that it will take time due to weather conditions. Freezing rain is expected to continue throughout the day with temperatures below zero and bitter cold wind.”
As the storm’s reach extended eastward, mutual aid became a lifeline. Florida-based SECO Energy dispatched a nine-member crew to South Carolina to help restore power in northern South Carolina and Georgia. “Mutual aid is a cornerstone of the electric cooperative network,” said Kathy Judkins, SECO’s vice president of communications, community and member experiences. “We are proud to support our fellow cooperatives and the communities they serve during severe weather events.”
The scale and severity of Fern’s impact were not lost on national observers. The Washington Post reported that the storm was forecasted to be one of the biggest in years for many cities, with catastrophic impacts anticipated across the central United States. Sleet, ice, and snow battered the region, and the National Weather Service deployed new AI-powered forecasts to track the storm’s path and intensity. The result? Disrupted travel, canceled schools and civic gatherings, and frigid temperatures that forced communities to hunker down for what was shaping up to be a historic weather event.
But the story didn’t stop at downed power lines and snowed-in highways. The storm’s immense pressure on the U.S. power grid revealed vulnerabilities in the nation’s energy infrastructure. As FOX Business reported, grid operators took extraordinary steps to keep the lights on and avoid rolling blackouts. PJM Interconnection, the largest regional power grid serving 67 million people in the East and Mid-Atlantic, saw wholesale electricity prices spike above $3,000 per megawatt-hour early Saturday—up from under $200 earlier that day. In New England, utilities ramped up fuel oil generation to conserve natural gas, the region’s primary fuel source.
At the heart of the crisis was America’s growing dependence on natural gas for electricity generation. Didi Caldwell, founder and CEO of Global Location Strategies, explained to FOX Business, “What we lack is sufficient capacity to store and deliver gas in real time.” Natural gas now fuels roughly 40% of U.S. electricity generation, a dramatic increase from about 12% in 1990. Unlike coal plants, which stockpile months’ worth of fuel on-site, most gas plants rely on just-in-time delivery. Any disruption—say, from frozen pipelines or infrastructure—can quickly threaten power generation. “If anything happens to disrupt the supply of gas to the generating stations, they have little to no practical backup,” Caldwell said.
Winter storms like Fern amplify these risks. As households crank up the heat, demand for natural gas and electricity soar in tandem, putting immense stress on supply chains. Caldwell pointed out that every region faces exposure, but for different reasons. In the Southeast, the lack of storage and limited transport capacity mean that, during cold snaps, natural gas competes with itself for both heating and electricity generation. The Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co. Zone 5—which runs through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia—was identified as particularly vulnerable. “Limited storage and pipeline capacity mean that during major winter events, atypical for this region like the one predicted for this weekend, prices for gas and the transport capacity—basically the reserved volume on the pipeline—skyrocket,” Caldwell explained.
The vulnerabilities of the system were laid bare during Texas’ deadly Winter Storm Uri in 2021, when frozen gas infrastructure led to widespread outages. While upgrades followed, Fern was among the first major tests of those improvements. A similar near-failure occurred in 2022, when gas systems in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic were pushed to the brink during an Arctic cold event, with the grid holding only through emergency measures and razor-thin margins.
Long-term solutions, Caldwell argued, require more than simply adding new natural gas generation. “Adding more natural gas generation will not fix and may exacerbate the risks,” she cautioned. Instead, grid modernization, targeted upgrades to gas delivery, and better coordination between gas and electric systems are essential to weathering future storms.
As the weekend unfolded, the full impact of Winter Storm Fern became clear: widespread outages, hazardous roads, and a renewed sense of urgency around the nation’s energy resilience. While mutual aid and tireless crews worked to restore power, the storm served as a stark reminder of the delicate balance that keeps America’s lights on—and the challenges that lie ahead as extreme weather events grow more frequent and severe.