Utility Lessons Learned from Winter Storm Fern

Image courtesy of James St. John under Attribution 4.0 International Deed, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.

Winter Storm Fern was the second-deadliest winter storm in U.S. history.  Millions of people lost power, and, sadly, over 172 lives were lost.  The silver lining is that the storm provided some impactful lessons learned for electric utilities, especially those operating within southeastern states like Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.

What Winter Storm Fern Taught Us

The January 2026 event was literally historic for some electric providers.  For example, Fern was the most disruptive storm in Nashville Electric Service (NES) history, causing 230k outages and damaging 800 poles.  NES was inundated with customer outreach (to the tune of approximately 83k inbound phone calls, and 2.3 million text messages), contributing to the chaos.

But NES wasn’t the only utility that got absolutely hammered by the storm.  Over 91k Entergy Louisiana customers lost power, many of which for days, largely caused by over 700 compromised poles, and about 85k customers of the Tennessee Electric Cooperative Association were interrupted.

So yes, it was a big event, causing major issues like the rapid icing of equipment such as transmission lines and towers, the triggering of automatic trips of breakers leading to forced shutdowns, oil lubrication and thickening issues, and reduced solar generation.

But the question remains – what did we learn that can help going forward?  Well, a recent EESI analysis of the storm’s impact offers some recommendations:

• Natural gas should be stored in strategic locations to maximize accessibility during inclement weather.
• Mandatory infrastructure weatherization standards should be developed and implemented.
• Large energy consumers should be encouraged to curtail consumption during major events to support continued system operation.
• The hardening of critical infrastructure circuits near water infrastructure and hospitals should be prioritized.
• There should be a push for the deployment of microgrids at critical facilities to help diversify the load.

There’s no doubt, next to Winter Storm Uri, Winter Storm Fern was one of the most damaging winter events in U.S. history.  Hopefully, the lessons learned from the experience will translate into real emergency preparedness improvements going forward.