Just over a week ago, blizzard conditions, severe thunderstorms, damaging winds, heavy rain, and bitter cold slammed parts of the eastern US, leaving more than 70 million people under winter weather alerts on Friday, January 12th.
The massive storm was only one piece in a very active weather pattern. On Friday morning, multiple weather hazards were impacting the country, and the National Weather Service issued a weather alert for nearly every state.
There were blizzard warnings, tornado warnings, wind advisories, and more in effect early Friday as the massive storm worked its way across the eastern half of the US. Wind alerts stretch nearly 2,000 miles from Texas to New England, while flood alerts range from the mid-Atlantic to the Northeast.
By Friday evening, nearly 400,000 customers nationwide were without power, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks, records, and aggregates power outages across the United States.
The Great Lakes area was hit the hardest with more than 234,500 customers without power and Michigan accounts for more than half of that with 127,970 customers in the dark.
Here’s the region-by-region look at outages as of Friday night around 9:30 pm E.T:
- Great Lakes: 234,500+
- Mid-Atlantic: 84,000+
- South: 33,100+
- Southeast: 21,900+
- Pacific: 12,900+
- Midwest: 7,000+
- New England: 3,500+
- Mountain: 1,700+
Damage and Power Outages in Randolph County
Unfortunately, our community was not spared from the impacts of this storm. On Friday (1/12/24), our community faced an unprecedented challenge. The severe windstorms we experienced resulted in the catastrophic loss of one of our towers in Randolph County, impacting our connectivity services significantly. But immediately our team got to work.
As of Friday, January 12th, we have successfully replaced and restored connectivity service to more than 85% of our customers, and our teams have been working around the clock to address this issue.
We understand the importance of staying connected, especially in times of crisis. And we want you to know we are deploying all available resources to ensure full restoration as soon as possible.
Regular updates will be provided as we make more progress.
We deeply appreciate your patience and understanding during this time. Our priority is to keep you connected and informed.
Stay tuned for further updates, and feel free to reach out to our customer support for assistance.
A heartfelt thank you to our dedicated engineers, technicians, and support staff who worked tirelessly to restore service to the remaining 15% of our customers. Your commitment in these challenging times is truly commendable!
Please reach out to us if you have any further questions or concerns.