BELZONI, Miss. (AP) — As tens of thousands of people endured nearly a week with no electricity, another storm loomed on the East Coast where residents braced for near-hurricane force winds, heavy snow and potential flooding.

More than 230,000 homes and businesses were without electricity Friday, with the vast majority of those outages in Mississippi and Tennessee, according to the outage tracking website poweroutage.us.

In Mississippi’s Lafayette County, where about 12,000 people were still without electricity mid-day Friday, emergency management agency spokesperson Beau Moore said he knows not everyone will get power back before the cold hits.

“It’s a race against time to get it on for those we can get it on for,” Moore said.

Workers are attacking the project by ground and air. A video on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Facebook page shows a worker sitting on the skids of a hovering helicopter so they can repair a giant power structure.

Arctic air moving into the Southeast will cause already frigid temperatures to plummet into the teens on Friday night in cities like Nashville, Tennessee, where many still lacked power nearly a week after a massive storm dumped snow and ice across the eastern U.S., the National Weather Service said.

Forecasters say the subfreezing weather will persist in the eastern U.S. into February and there’s high chance of heavy snow in the Carolinas, Virginia and northeast Georgia this weekend, possibly up to a foot in parts of North Carolina. Snow is also possible along the East Coast from Maryland to Maine.

On Saturday night and early Sunday, forecasters expect wind and snow that could lead to blizzard conditions before the storm starts to move to sea.

Several inches of snow, possibly 1 foot in some locations, were forecast statewide, particularly in eastern counties.

Hundreds of state National Guard soldiers were ready to help. State workers have also been preparing roads.

In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a town more accustomed to hurricanes, traffic jams and tourists, the National Weather Service predicted 6 inches of snow.

The city has no snow removal equipment. Mayor Mark Kruea said they will “use what we can find” — maybe a motor grader or bulldozer to scrape streets.