A powerful winter storm sweeping across the United States recently forced a large portion of Bitcoin mining operations to reduce or suspend their activity, causing a significant drop in the network’s computing power and temporarily slowing the creation of new blocks. The extreme weather — characterized by frigid temperatures, heavy snow, and widespread ice — pushed many miners to either shut down their equipment entirely or scale back operations to lessen the strain on local power grids during peak demand.
Data from multiple mining analytics sources showed that one of the largest North American mining pools saw its contribution to the Bitcoin network’s total computing power plunge by roughly 60% over a short period, marking one of the most dramatic operational cutbacks since a similar grid crisis during Texas winters in 2021. Large pools like Foundry USA and others with significant U.S. footprints reported steep reductions in hash rate — the term used to describe the cumulative processing power that secures the Bitcoin blockchain — as operators prioritized grid stability and safety.
With more than 110 exahashes per second of mining capacity taken offline, the average time it took for the network to find new blocks extended above its typical target of about 10 minutes. During the most intense period of disruption, block times stretched to roughly 12 minutes as fewer machines competed to solve the cryptographic puzzles required to validate transactions and add them to the blockchain. Normally, Bitcoin is designed to adjust mining difficulty every 2,016 blocks — roughly a two-week cycle — so that block production returns to its expected pace even if hashrate fluctuates, but sudden changes like this can cause temporary slowdowns until the automatic adjustment takes effect.
The storm, which meteorologists tracked across a broad swath of the country, also led to widespread power outages affecting large populations. In several states, energy providers issued alerts as cold-weather heating demand spiked, prompting conservation measures. Mining farms and data centers, which consume significant electricity, responded by cutting back operations in places where grid operators requested lower demand, demonstrating how extreme weather events in the real world can ripple into the digital realm of blockchain infrastructure.
Beyond the immediate technical effects, this episode underscores the broader interdependence between physical infrastructure and decentralized networks like Bitcoin. With the United States home to a substantial share of global Bitcoin mining activity, disruptions to grid reliability or power availability can quickly influence network performance and security metrics. While the system continued to function — and block production eventually stabilized — the incident highlighted the vulnerability of digital ledger operations to extreme environmental conditions and regional energy constraints.
As miners work to restore full capacity and the weather systems move past their worst impacts, analysts will be watching how quickly hash rate recovers and how the network’s automatic difficulty adjustment helps normalize block times. The event also reignites discussions about geographic diversification of mining operations and the role of demand-response strategies, where miners can adjust energy use to support wider grid resilience during stressful conditions.
Source: Cryptonews Edited by Sonarx