A cold snap that has the southern US firmly in its grip is threatening to bring record-breaking snowfall to New Orleans and Houston and cause a deep freeze that could jeopardize oil and gas production and power grids.

Snow and sleet began falling in Houston on Monday evening (1/20/2025) and spread across most of southeast Texas by late evening. Up to 10 inches could fall by Tuesday, which would be a record for January, the National Weather Service said. New Orleans could get 7 inches, an all-time high for the region, as could Louisiana's capital, Baton Rouge.

Extreme cold warnings stretch from North Dakota to West Texas. "It's a significant storm for this far south," said Tony Fracasso, a senior meteorologist at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. "It looks like almost all of Texas has some chance of winter precipitation."

Cold may disrupt oil and gas production

Behind the snow, frigid temperatures will move in, potentially shaking up oil and gas production in the short term as electricity demand soars. When the freeze hit West Texas on Monday morning, temperatures in Odessa - the center of the oil-rich Permian Basin - had only reached 10.5 °C (19 °F) and are expected to drop to 15 °C (59 °F) overnight. Cold weather can disrupt oil and gas production by freezing the water in wells and pipelines.

The Texas power grid has set up a weather alert: an early warning that extreme cold, which drives up heating demand, could strain supplies. Peak electricity demand will increase over the next two days, reaching 77.5 gigawatts on Tuesday morning, according to a recent forecast from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Electricity prices in Dallas will rise to $174 per megawatt-hour during the morning peak, more than double Monday's peak, according to the state grid operator.

Ercot's forecasts have been volatile, at times showing that demand could test last January's winter record of 78.3 gigawatts, although the grid operator said it expects to have enough supply to meet demand.

Travel disrupted

Falling temperatures have also triggered grid alerts outside Texas. PJM Interconnection, which operates the largest US power grid from Washington DC to Illinois, issued a "low voltage alert" on Sunday that will last until Thursday. PJM said demand could rise to 144 gigawatts Tuesday morning, breaking a decade-long record of nearly 143.3 gigawatts.

Amtrak canceled several trains in the western and southern U.S., the federally funded rail company said on its website. Airline tracking service FlightAware, in turn, said that as of 4:25 p.m. Monday in New York, 566 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled, while another 5,279 were delayed.

New Orleans is also closing sections of Interstate 10, a major interstate highway, as of early Tuesday morning.

Fracasso said the snow will sweep across Texas into Louisiana late Monday and then into Mississippi and Alabama by Tuesday. By midweek, it will have reached the North Carolina coast and perhaps even spread into southern Virginia before heading out to the Atlantic.