Across the United States, a growing body of grid data now points to specific regions where a single storm or heat wave could trigger cascading, multi‑day blackouts. A new generation of outage maps and reliability assessments is turning that risk into something visible, county by county, revealing patterns that are as geographic as they are technical. I see three broad danger zones emerging: the coasts, the nation’s energy belt, and a swath of fast‑growing interior cities whose demand is racing ahead of their infrastructure.
Those patterns are not hypothetical. Regional grid operators and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation are already warning that parts of the country face elevated odds of electricity shortfalls when weather turns extreme, a message reinforced in the latest Winter Reliability Assessment. At the same time, academic researchers are using machine learning and historical outage records to pinpoint hundreds of local “hot spots” where the lights go out more often and for longer stretches, turning the risk of catastrophic blackouts into a measurable, mappable reality.
How the new blackout map was built
The most detailed picture of where the grid is fragile comes from a nationwide analysis by the Urban Resilience AI Lab at Texas A&M University, which produced what it calls the first Power System Vulnerability map. Researchers fed outage records into machine‑learning models to evaluate how often power fails, how long it stays off, and how intense those events are, then layered in local climate and infrastructure data. A related Texas A&M effort, described as “Texas A&M Study Identifies Grid Hotspots The Texas,” identified 318 counties across 45 states as power outage hotspots, underscoring how widespread the problem has become.
Another study, which drew on data from Oak Ridge National, used similar techniques to rank states by the duration, frequency, and intensity of reported outages. That work dovetails with a separate analysis of “Hot spots for power outages” from Texas A&M’s Urban Resilience Artificial Intelligence Lab, which concluded that some regions are more vulnerable than utilities had previously acknowledged. Together, these assessments provide the backbone for a national risk map that aligns closely with what grid regulators are now warning about in seasonal reliability outlooks.
Coastal pressure cookers: West Coast, Gulf, and Atlantic
On the West Coast, the vulnerability map lights up along a corridor that runs from Southern California through the Pacific Northwest. The analysis highlights “The West Coast, particularly California and Washington,” as well as parts of the Great Lakes corridor and Gulf Coast areas of Texas, as places where outages are most common, according to the Great Lakes corridor summary. In the western interconnection, the Winter Reliability Assessment Western Overview warns that during the 2025–2026 season, some generators may simply “be unable to get fuel,” a risk that is especially acute in hydropower‑dependent states, as outlined in the Winter Reliability Assessment.
Along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, the same vulnerability map shows dense clusters of high‑risk counties in Florida, coastal Louisiana, and the Northeast megalopolis that stretches through cities like Boston. The same analysis also flags the Canadian Maritimes as part of a broader Atlantic corridor where storms routinely topple lines and flood substations. Ageing infrastructure and pipelines built decades ago, often on exposed terrain, are identified as structural risk factors in these regions, a pattern that mirrors the “Ageing infrastructure and pipelines built decades ago” warning in a separate analysis of energy accidents across the Americas that highlights Ageing assets as a recurring hazard.
Texas and the data‑center squeeze
If there is a single epicenter of blackout anxiety on the new map, it is Texas. Between 2000 and 2023, Texas and California lead the nation in blackouts, and the trend is getting worse, not better, according to an analysis that notes “Texas and California lead the nation in blackouts.” The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, is flagged as facing elevated risk from surging demand driven by data centers and population growth that is outpacing dispatchable resources. That warning is echoed by NERC, the North American Electric Reliability Corp, whose president Jim Robb told a FERC conference that ERCOT could see roughly 60 GW in additional demand by 2031 on a system already running with razor‑thin reserve margins, as described in a North American Electric summary.
Those structural pressures collide with acute weather threats. The 2021 Winter Storm Uri exposed how quickly the Texas grid can unravel when extreme cold hits gas production and power plants at the same time. Now, forecasters are again warning of severe ice, with one energy expert in Austin issuing a dire warning ahead of a 2026 Texas ice storm that could hit Nearby Communities including East Austin, South Austin, North Austin, Pflugerville, Round Rock, and Cedar Park‑Leander, as described in a Nearby Communities alert. A separate forecast notes that as much as an ½ inch of ice is expected in parts of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana and Missis, stretching from Texas to the Carolinas, according to a Jan forecast that explicitly warns of a potentially catastrophic winter storm.
Winter’s expanding danger zone
Winter is no longer just a northern grid problem. NERC’s 2025–2026 Winter Reliability Assessment highlights regions at elevated risk of electricity shortfalls during extreme winter conditions, particularly when demand spikes and fuel supplies tighten, as outlined in a Winter Reliability Assessment summary. At a FERC winter outlook session, NERC Senior Engineer Robert Tallman shared a summary of the ERO’s Winter Reliability Assessment and warned that tight conditions seen in recent years could be the case again this winter, according to a Robert Tallman briefing. Those concerns are already being tested by a sprawling storm system that forecasters say could coat roads, trees, and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the central United States, as described in a new storm alert.
In the Southeast and Mid‑Atlantic, the FOX Forecast Center has pinpointed two distinct areas that may see the most freezing rain, warning that heavy ice could bring down trees and power lines and trigger widespread outages, according to a FOX Forecast Center update. In the South, Simon Mahan, Executive Director of a regional renewable energy group, has warned that forecasts for Winter Storm Fern are becoming increasingly concerning, with meteorologists highlighting the risk to the electric grid from ice loading and high winds, as laid out in a Simon Mahan briefing. Together, these forecasts show how a single multi‑day storm can simultaneously stress grids from the Southern Plains to the Mid‑Atlantic, exactly the kind of scenario NERC’s winter assessments are trying to anticipate.
Heat domes, summer peaks, and what comes next
Summer is no safer. A recent Regional Outlook, titled “Who’s at Risk?” from NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation), identifies several regions facing an elevated risk of energy shortfalls if conditions become extreme, particularly during heat waves that drive air‑conditioning demand, as summarized in the Regional Outlook. Another analysis notes that power outages, blackouts or brownouts can happen anywhere, but you are more at risk if you live in one of the areas facing an elevated risk designation from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, as explained in a Power overview of heat domes and surging grid demand. Those elevated‑risk regions line up closely with the outage hot spots on the Texas A&M map, reinforcing the idea that the same counties that struggle in winter are also brittle in summer.
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