US Suffered a Major Power Outage Every Month of 2026

A Reddit post making the rounds this week claims the U.S. has experienced at least one major power outage every month of 2026 — but is it true? I dug into several outages, the extreme weather behind them, and what we can do to help keep the lights on. […] The claim that hundreds of thousands of Americans were without power over extended periods at least once per month, every month of 2026 surprised be in two ways. First, because I had no idea if it was true — and, second, because it felt true. We try to do better than writing about things that feel true around here, however, so I did a bit of research (translation: I Googled power outages by month) and came up with the following examples in about sixty seconds

January: More than 296,000 customers still without power as winter storm freezes much of the US
February: More than 380,000 customers without power as winter storm hits US Northeast
March: Storms Cut Power to Over 1 Million Customers in U.S. Midwest, Mid-Atlantic; Ohio Hardest Hit
April: At least 29 tornadoes touched down in Central Illinois on April 17th
May: Energy Secretary Issues Emergency Order to Deploy Backup Generation in the Mid-Atlantic Amid Heatwave
June: More than 373,000 U.S. customers without power due to extreme weather
… and that list is far from comprehensive, and how you feel about it might depend on what you consider a “major” outage, of course — but consider that there are tens of thousands of Americans without power right now, and that’s not making the news. […] The lesson here is that weather-related grid outages — whether they’re caused by wildfires, mudslides, derechos, tornadoes, ice storms, hurricanes, heat waves, or some other disaster I’m lucky enough to have forgotten about — read like statistics when they’re happening over there, but get personal real quick when they’re happening to you.