Disruptive weather hits US South again

Recyclers in the U.S. South who may have hoped a tentative labor-management settlement at ports in that region would lead to a noneventful winter instead have had to battle against waves of severe wintry weather.

“A once-in-a-generation storm for the Gulf Coast and Southeast that brought snow, sleet, ice and an extreme cold outbreak to the eastern half of the country caused between $14 billion and $17 billion in economic losses and business disruptions, according to a preliminary estimate,” the AccuWeather Global Weather Center reports.

Prior to this storm, which hit at the start of the third week of January, previous cold and snowy weather systems disrupted traffic (and recycling and waste collection) in belts stretching from Texas through to the Mid-Atlantic states.

“This has been the worst winter storm to hit the Gulf Coast in decades," AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter says regarding the most recent weather event. "Travel was essentially shut down along several stretches of the Interstate 10 corridor between Houston and New Orleans that are critical for commerce.”

"Businesses have been forced to shut down," AccuWeather adds. "Supply chain and shipping logistics have been severely disrupted. With the cold remaining in place, the impacts and interruptions from this winter storm will be felt for days to come.”

Snow totals topping 10 inches have been reported in parts of southern Louisiana, while up to 6 inches of snow fell in parts of southeastern Texas and more than 4 inches of snow accumulated in parts of Mississippi and Alabama.

In addition to delaying collection, scrap metal and cardboard generation and collection activities likely are paused in the region at construction and demolition sites and at workplaces where employees have stayed home rather than driving on snowy and icy roads.

In a 30-day period that included late December and the first 20 days of January, steel mills located in the South paid more for ferrous scrap than mills in other parts of the country.

Mill buying transaction figures gathered by the Raw Material Data Aggregation Service (RMDAS) of Pittsburgh-based MSA Inc. show three benchmark grades tracked by the pricing service had their highest value in the country in the South during that time frame.

While scrap supply is only part of the equation that leads to price movements in steel recycling market, the ongoing weather-related disruptions in the South almost certainly played a part in the regional pricing difference.

On the curbside recycling and municipal solid waste (MSW) collection front, municipalities throughout the South and Mid-Atlantic have announced delayed and shifting collection schedules throughout the past three weeks.

A notice on the city of New Orleans website indicates its Department of Sanitation has suspended citywide trash and recycling collections Jan. 21 and Jan. 22 due to the impacts of the severe winter weather. Curbside trash and recycling collection services currently are planned to resume Jan 23.

AccuWeather expects the combined total damage and economic loss from extreme weather events in the United States in the past 12 months, including the recent southern winter storms, to reach up to $800 billion, equivalent to nearly 3 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product.

Dr. Joel N. Myers, founder and executive chairman of AccuWeather, says the past 12 months have been the most costly and impactful stretch of extreme weather in the United States in the past 90 years, since the dust bowl in the 1930s.