The Top 10 Most Significant Outages of 2018
EATON Blackout Tracker Annual Report 2018
Mother Nature spared no section of the country in 2018. The year’s biggest blackouts left customers not only in the dark, but often in extreme heat or bone-chilling cold. Below is a glimpse into some of the largest power outages of the year.
1.) Back-to-back nor’easters.
Thousands of East Coast residents spent days — and some more than a week — in the dark after two back-to-back winter storms pummeled the region in early March, causing massive outages. New Jersey was among the hardest hit states, enduring 600 broken poles and 1,700 spans of wire that required replacement. The widespread system damage left utility companies unprepared for the second squall just days later, which struck while tens of thousands of residents remained in the dark from the previous “bomb cyclone.” More than 1 million customers in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut were left without electricity after the second storm, with full restoration taking just over a week.
2.) Hurricane Michael.
Dubbed a “history-making monster” by a Florida newspaper, the Oct. 10 storm left approximately 2.5 million electricity customers across the Southeast without power. Making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane with winds blasting at over 150 mph, Michael also left behind outages in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. More than 35,000 utility workers from at least 27 states and Canada rallied together to restore power as quickly as possible.
3.) Hurricane Florence.
Some 1.4 million customers across the Carolinas were left without power at one time or another after Flo made landfall in September. Despite arriving as a weakened Category 1 hurricane, she still packed enough wind speed to uproot trees and cause the widespread outages.
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