That was down from a total of around 1.5 million customers that lost power as utilities - mostly in the U.S. Southeast - restore power after the storms moved on from their service territories.

Most outages were in North Carolina, with over 187,000 customers without power, followed by Virginia, Tennessee, Maine and New York.

More than a dozen other states east of the Mississippi River plus Washington State, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas west of the Mississippi River each had more than 10,000 customers facing outages due to winter storms.

Leading into the holiday weekend, the storm is expected to bring blizzard conditions to the Great Lakes region, heavy rains followed by a flash freeze on the East Coast, wind gusts of 60 miles per hour (100 kph) and bitter cold as far south as the U.S.-Mexico border.

The utility with the most outages was Duke Energy Corp with over 158,000 customers without power in North and South Carolina.

Here are the major outages by state:

State Out Now

North Carolina 187,300

Virginia 145,700

Tennessee 143,600

Maine 114,500

New York 104,300

Pennsylvania 90,500

Connecticut 78,100

Vermont 69,500

Ohio 69,200

Maryland 68,000

Texas 65,000

New Hampshire 59,100

Georgia 44,900

Massachusetts 43,800

South Carolina 31,300

West Virginia 24,700

Washington 19,400

Louisiana 17,900

Kentucky 15,400

Arkansas 11,900

Total 1,404,100

(Reporting by Bangalore Commodities Desk and Scott DiSavino in New York; Editing by Jason Neely, Jonathan Oatis and Frances Kerry)