Saturday's (December 24) game between the Tennessee Titans and Houston Texans has been delayed one hour due to rolling blackouts in the Nashville area.
Metro Nashville Mayor John Cooper confirmed that the kickoff at Nissan Stadium would be pushed back to 1:00 p.m. local time as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Nashville Electric Service continue to work toward ending rolling blackouts in Middle Tennessee amid severely cold temperatures.
"I appreciate the @Titans delaying kickoff for one hour as @TVAnews commits to immediately ending the rolling blackouts," Cooper tweeted. "NES continues to work hard to minimize disruption for residents this holiday weekend."
Cooper had previously said that he asked the Titans to postpone Saturday's previously-scheduled noon kickoff "in solidarity with our neighbors" amid TVA's continued rolling blackouts.
Tennessee is currently dealing with more than 84,000 power outages, which is third behind only North Carolina and Maine, according to PowerOutage.us.
At least 17 people have died in relation to the severe winter storm that continues to affect the eastern two-thirds of the United States, including a resident in Tennessee, the Tennessee Department of Health confirmed on Friday (December 23) via NBC News.
The weather-related deaths were also reported in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska and Ohio.
Blizzards and an arctic blast are expected to hit the Midwest and Northeast regions of the U.S. through the holiday weekend, which will bring "extremely dangerous" and "at times impossible" travel conditions, the National Weather Service said in a bulletin on Saturday (December 24) via NBC News.
FlightAware reported 12,384 total flight delays; 4,385 total delays on flights within, into or out of the United States, 4,072 total flight cancellations; and 2,016 total cancellations on flights within, into, or out of the United States as of Saturday afternoon.