Updates with latest outages

Jan 29 (Reuters) - A severe winter storm that brought heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain has left more than 296,000 homes and businesses without power across a swath of the U.S., from the Ohio Valley and mid-South region to New England.

The hardest-hit utilities included Nashville Electric Service $(NES)$ in Tennessee, where 95,687 of 463,455 customers were without power, and Entergy, with more than 77,451 of its 3.05 million U.S. customers affected, according to PowerOutage.us.

"We continue to make progress in restoration efforts in the last hour. More than 930 lineworkers from seven states are working around the clock and have restored power to 127,000 customers," NES said in a post on X late on Wednesday.

The storm is set to become the costliest severe weather event since the Los Angeles-area wildfires in early 2025, with preliminary damage and economic losses estimated at $105 billion to $115 billion, AccuWeather said.

"Entergy Mississippi is taking to the skies flying drones and helicopters up to 5,000 feet in the air... to better help scan our region for damages, improving the speed in which we can restore power for our customers," Entergy said in a release on Wednesday.

Here are the major outages by state:

(Reporting by Noel John, Sarah Qureshi and Anmol Choubey in Bengaluru; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Michael Perry)

((Noel.John@thomsonreuters.com;))