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By KELIN DILLON

Power outages on the morning of Monday, Feb. 16, left 4.7 million Mexican homes in the northern Mexican states of Coahuila, Nuevo León, Chihuahua, and Tamaulipas without lights or energy, following freezing temperatures that even led to snowfall in parts of the country. 

Outages also afflicted the United States in states bordering Mexico, like Texas, where 2.8 million people were left without power after the cold snap.

Mexico’s National Center for Energy Control (Cenace) said the blackout was caused by power plant failure due to a lack of natural gas. The power went out at 7:48 a.m, affecting 6,950 megawatts of energy.

Cenace urged the populations in the afflicted states to reduce their light consumption during cold weather in order to prevent further blackouts.

Some states even reported snowfall, with Ciudad Juárez bringing in 4 centimeters of snow on Monday morning and Monterrey experiencing a sleet storm. While the snow was not widespread, freezing temperatures were, reaching   minus 8 degrees celsius in some of the most northern parts of the country.

…Feb. 16, 2021