That bad weather can damage property and lives is already known. It also has turned out to be the leading cause of power outages in the United States. And that, in turn, has helped spur the formation of a consortium of electric utilities that plans to create a national stockpile of hard-to-replace spare transformers. 

The supplier of half the coal burned in Minnesota power plants, Arch Coal Inc., filed for bankruptcy protection but pledged no interruption in mining and shipments to customers like Xcel Energy and Minnesota Power.