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During the winter of 2025, a bomb cyclone swept across the Mid-Atlantic. We saw a sharp increase in home electrical fire hazards. In-home fire risks always increase during cold, extreme weather. Unfortunately, the same extreme cold weather can impact the quality of power being delivered to the home.
Winter storms wreaked havoc on the electrical grid. Whisker Labs live video loop of power surges, sags, and outages caused by weather, power plant failures, and planned rolling blackouts.
Extreme Cold Risks
Increased Risk from Grid Issues
The winter storms at that time wreaked havoc on the electrical grid in Texas. The above video loop during that time documents power surges, sags, and outages caused by weather, power plant failures, and planned rolling blackouts.
Compromised power quality and utility grid faults can sometimes increase ‘in-home’ risk, including fires, appliance damage, and/or electrocution risks.
Increased Risk from Heating Devices
At the same time, increased reliance on space heaters, heating blankets, and other devices to stay warm stresses the home electrical system – and, collectively, the electrical grid. These devices often use significant power, increasing fire risk.
Sometimes a home electrical network is ill-prepared to handle an increased demand of this nature, leading to hazardous arcing, sometimes hidden in walls, that can lead to devastating electrical fires. In other cases, a device is not plugged in or connected correctly or is faulty due to age, wear, or poor design.
Fire safety involves all of us, in the home and in the community. Stay warm and stay safe.
