Call it an omen of things to come.
A rare and powerful winter storm blanketed the US Gulf Coast on Tuesday — barely 24 hours after newly-inaugurated president Donald Trump renamed the ubiquitous waterbody the ‘Gulf of America — unleashing record-breaking snowfall and freezing temperatures in cities and states unaccustomed to such severe weather and prompting shut-ins of oil and gas wells across a broad swath of the country extending into Montana.
Snow began falling Monday night in Houston, with southeast Texas seeing record accumulations of up to 10 centimetres (four inches), according to the National Weather Service. New Orleans braced for almost 20 centimetres — another all-time high — disrupting travel, straining energy supplies and prompting blackout warnings.
On Tuesday the Big Easy even issued the first-ever blizzard warning in its history.
That prompted Louisiana governor Jeff Landry — a Republican — to declare a weather emergency and warned people against venturing outdoors.
“It is extremely important to stay off the road,” he said at a news conference Monday. “Unless you absolutely need to be on the road, stay at home and stay warm.”
Georgia, Florida, Mississippi and Alabama also declared states of emergencies.
“This is a significant storm for so far south,” said Tony Fracasso, senior branch forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center.
Snowfall was expected to move into the Carolinas by midweek before heading out to the Atlantic. As of Tuesday afternoon, winter storm warnings spanned more than 2,500 km of the southern US, covering eight states—from southern Texas to North Carolina, and even parts of the Florida Panhandle.
Odessa, Texas — located in the oil-rich Permian Basin — saw temperatures dropping to -7.2C, freezing water in wells and pipelines and disrupting oil and natural gas production throughout the state.
Air travel was particularly hard hit, with major airports in Houston — including George Bush Intercontinental — closing outright. Likewise, most flights at New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong Airport were cancelled. Highways and roads across Louisiana became impassable, including portions of Interstate 10 linking the two cities.
Even in relatively snowy North Dakota, extreme cold slashed oil production by an estimated 125,000 to 150,000 barrels per day —12% of the region’s output. Temperatures in Colorado and Kansas fell to -35C with windchills of -55C.
However, Texas’ oil and gas operations reported minimal disruptions despite widespread road closures.
Nonetheless, the Port of Houston announced the closure of its eight public facilities on Tuesday, halting vessel operations and container truck traffic to the largest concentration of refineries in the world.
The storm also prompted the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to issue a weather alert as the cold drove heating demand to unprecedented levels and causing power prices to spike. Dallas electricity prices surged to USD$174 per megawatt-hour, more than double Monday’s high. Similar alerts were issued all the way up the eastern seaboard from Washington DC to Illinois.
The storm highlighted the fragility of energy and transportation networks in the face of extreme weather, underscoring the Gulf Coast’s vulnerability to conditions more typical of northern states. As the deep freeze lingers, recovery efforts were expected to be slow, with potentially far-reaching implications for energy markets and infrastructure resilience backing all the way up into Canada.
Despite the cold, oil prices actually fell on Tuesday, after Trump’s executive orders to “drill baby, drill” and massively increase US supplies. Benchmark West Texas Intermediate was down USD$1.79 to $76.09 per barrel while European Brent shed 72 cents to $79.43.