(Bloomberg) -- A historic winter storm threatened natural gas shipments from one the biggest US export plants while heavy snow shut schools and airports in Houston and highways in New Orleans.
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A low-pressure system is dropping bitter cold from Texas to North Carolina, disrupting rail and air travel as snow sweeps throughout the US South. The ripple effects are being felt as far afield as Europe, where gas prices jumped on concern about weather-driven interruptions to US supplies of the fuel.
“The system is going to drop a blanket of snow across the entire Gulf south,” Donald Jones, a weather service meteorologist. “It will be followed by another strong cold front and even more cold temperatures — it is very unusual for the Gulf Coast.”
The Texas grid operator declared a transmission emergency in the heavily populated southeast of the state that lasted roughly seven hours. Meanwhile, the massive Freeport LNG complex shut down, citing “intermittent” power interruptions.
Wind gusts of up to 35 miles (56 kilometers) an hour and heavy snow prompted the first blizzard warning ever for the area from Port Arthur, Texas, to Lafayette, Louisiana. Snow fell as far south as Brownsville, Texas, on the border with Mexico.
Heavy snow and freezing fog were reported at Lake Charles, Louisiana, where winds reached 16 mph, visibility dropped to a quarter mile and the wind chill made it feel like 12F (-11C), the National Weather Service said.
Deteriorating conditions at Lake Charles prompted a halt to pilot services through at least Wednesday. Without those pilots, oceangoing gas-hauling ships cannot approach the Cameron LNG terminal.
A wide area from central Texas through the Florida Panhandle is forecast to receive 3 to 6 inches of snow (8 to 15 centimeters), including a record 4 inches in Houston and an all-time high of as much as 8 inches in New Orleans, according to the National Weather Service.
More than 50 cold temperature records may be broken or tied, mainly across the Gulf Coast up the Appalachian Mountains and across the Ohio Valley through Thursday, according to the Weather Prediction Center. There’ll likely be significant icing across northern Florida.
The frigid weather, which will moderate through the week, is expected to drive up electricity demand and may crimp natural gas and oil production due to freezing water in wells and pipelines. As the freeze gripped West Texas, temperatures in Odessa — the middle of the oil-rich Permian basin — lingered at 13F early Tuesday.