Monitoring the Situation
❄️ Snow · Ice · NES · Temperatures · · Much more!
Good afternoon, everyone. We are monitoring the situation on the ground in Nashville... And not much more!
Things That Never Happen But Should Join us Thursday, February 19th for an evening with Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist. This is the third installment of the Pamphleteer's new monthly event series. Paying Bard-level subscribers receive free access to this and future events. (Buy Tickets)
Like what we do? Forward us to a friend
The Ice Storm Situation in Nashville
From Davis Hunt
As you'd expect, not a whole lot of action in the news, so I'm going to experiment a bit and drip-feed some information, anecdotes, and data points for those "monitoring the situation."
⚡️ No Power As of this writing, the NES power outage dashboard shows 176,924 customers lacking power. NES has ~470,00 total customers, so about 37% of the city doesn't have electricity. Yesterday afternoon, the number peaked at 230,000. Currently, Davidson County accounts for ~20% of power outages across the country.
Mayor O'Connell declared a state-of-emergency to deal with all the damage, and proceedings in the state and city government are paused today. With temperatures tonight expected to reach close to 0ºF, the National Weather Service has issued an Extreme Cold Warning for the area.
🪫 NES Understaffed? Nashville has suffered much worse damage than the surrounding counties. According to NES's most recent update, there are 275+ linemen in the field repairing lines to restore power for 176k customers. That's over 500 outages per lineman.
By comparison, the Cumberland Electric Membership Corporation (CEMC), which serves Cheatham, Montgomery, Robertson, Stewart, and Sumner Counties, has over 500 workers working on 22,000 outages. That's 44 outages per lineman.
Public statements from NES on expected timelines are vague, indicating the outage could "span over days or longer." Could NES have been better prepared for this?
⛏️ Why Not Bury the Lines? This is an obvious question that pops up every time a bunch of trees fall on a bunch of power lines and knock out people's power. Trimming branches back from lines can certainly help, but putting them underground would avoid the situation altogether.
The problem is the cost. Titans stadium? More buses? Worse and worse public schools? No problem, where do we sign?
But burying power lines is exorbitantly expensive. For example, I spoke to a developer who has a project in Greenville, South Carolina. The developers wanted to put 700 feet of power lines running by the property underground. The quote they received for this was ~$1M. That's about $1,500 per foot of line.
Nashville has 5,700 miles of power line. To put it all underground based on this quote, it'd cost nearly $45 billion, which is nearly ten times Metro's annual budget and 3/4 the state's annual budget. I'm obviously painting with a big brush here, but it's expensive.
❄️ '94 Ice Storm Nashville Oldheads remember the 1994 Ice Storm. Somewhere in my ancient toddler memory, I remember going to the Embassy Suites in Brentwood. The power at the house was out for 5 days. Parents are still in the same house, so we'll see how the city performs relative to 30 years ago.
📑 Anecdote from Yesterday "Drove all over West Nashville earlier this afternoon. It looks like a tornado came through here. Trees down in almost every yard and lines down all over the place. From the front porch, I could hear trees cracking all day. With ~10°F plus wind, it’s just going to get worse. I’m banking on there being no power at my house until at least Wednesday or Thursday. Wouldn’t be surprised if it took longer. A huge mess."
Welcome to America in 2026. You're sitting at the End of History. Nothing will ever happen again.
The steady march toward the impossible vision of a borderless world governed by rooms full of perfectly rational leaders incapable of committing evil in thought word or deed continues apace.
Will anything–can anything happen–that shakes us from our stupor? Is "Nothing Ever Happens" the law of the land? What should happen that hasn't happened?
Join us Thursday, February 19th as we sit down with Sean Davis, CEO and co-founder of The Federalist, to discuss whether anything will ever happen again and more. (Buy Ticket)
This event is for the benefit of The Pamphleteer and free for paying, Bard-level subscribers.
✹ THIS IS AN AI PHOTO
I've seen this photo posted all over the place. I even mistakenly posted it myself until people started hounding me about it being fake. It is in fact fake, but even if fake, it matches what I saw when I spent 1-2 hours driving around West Nashville yesterday. So, it is... spiritually true?
✹ HIGHWAY CARNAGE
✹ THE FROZEN CUMBERLAND (1940)
The Cumberland doesn't freeze anymore because the dam system built off it keeps the water flowing. John Robertson crossed the frozen river when he arrived on Christmas Day 1779 to found Fort Nashboro. The picture above is of the last time the river froze completely over.
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.
The Pamphleteer
The Pamphleteer
The Pamphleteer
The Pamphleteer
Today's newsletter is brought to you by Davis Hunt, Megan Podsiedlik, and Camelia Brennan.