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A blast of extreme cold is poised to descend on the central United States this weekend before spreading to New York and the rest of the East Coast, testing power grids and threatening to break temperature records.

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Frigid conditions will sweep the Midwest and South, including Texas, starting on Saturday and then shift east early next week. The low in Dallas is poised to reach -6 C Monday night, while temperatures in Manhattan will drop near -12 C late Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.

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The cold will start in the northern Rocky Mountains and Great Plains and “by Sunday spread all the way to the Gulf Coast and much of the eastern U.S.,” said Marc Chenard, a senior branch forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. “There will be below-normal temperatures in Texas during the day on Saturday. Most of the state gets below freezing through Wednesday.”

Bone—chilling weather across the densely populated areas of the central and eastern U.S. will raise energy demand and could send utilities scrambling to meet the spike in consumption, since much of the South relies on electricity for heating. A winter storm four years ago killed more than 200 people and led to the collapse of Texas’ electric grid. Cold temperatures can also disrupt the production of oil and natural gas by causing water in wells and pipelines to freeze.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state grid, has an advisory in place for Jan. 19 through noon on Jan. 23 because temperatures are expected to stay below freezing. Power demand is forecast to reach about 78.5 gigawatts on the morning of Jan. 21, which would edge over the record set last January. Still, Ercot expects to have enough supply to meet soaring electricity usage.

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PJM Interconnect, which manages the grid serving 65 million people from Washington to Illinois, has asked power producers to halt maintenance by Sunday at 6 a.m. to prepare for frigid conditions.

Houston’s daily average temperature will sink to almost 24F degrees below normal Tuesday, commercial forecaster Maxar said. In Dallas, readings will fall to 21F below the 30-year average on Monday.

About 31 locations could see daily high temperatures cold enough to break or tie records on Monday, mainly in the South, according to the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. A handful of records could fall in Texas on Tuesday.

While the cold will start to ease by the middle of next week, Monday’s presidential inauguration promises to be a chilly one, with temperatures in Washington dropping to -4 C under partly sunny skies, according to the National Weather Service. However, wind gusts up to 40 kilometres per hour could make it feel much colder, Chenard said.

—With assistance from Naureen S. Malik.

Bloomberg.com

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