In Nashville, which is still recovering from an ice storm last month that caused widespread power outages, business has been booming for Bradley Hite, a firewood supplier who said there was a wait of up to two weeks for delivery.
In New York, Richard Heby said his firewood business sold so much wood before a major winter storm a few weeks ago that it set sales records and was enough to fill an entire tractor trailer.
And in North Carolina, Jason Loflin had to recruit buddies from his gym to help him deliver firewood to the scores of customers seeking warmth.
Bitter cold weather and a cascade of winter storms across large sections of the United States have intensified demand for logs, natural hardwoods and manufactured, too.
It has also put pressure on suppliers, sawmills and retailers to keep up with the surge of people looking to feed their fireplaces or furnaces.
“People were like very desperate and in dire need,” said Mr. Loflin, 42, the owner of the Firewood Guy NC in Thomasville, N.C. “They literally sounded like the world was going to end.”
Mr. Loflin said that he was receiving 150 calls a day, up from his usual 10 to 15, before a potent winter storm hit North Carolina at the end of January.
“It was so much that my phone was just ringing back to back to back to back,” he said. “This year has been by far the busiest year we’ve ever had.”
Some of his customers were expecting to lose power. Others wanted a supplemental heat source. And then there were customers who had canceled previous orders when the temperatures were higher in early January who were now regretting their decision, said Mr. Loflin, whose father started the business 38 years ago.
“We got down in the single digits, around zero degrees there a few nights,” he said. “So they were kind of using it to keep the house warm, keep the pipes from freezing.”
Mr. Hite, 32, the owner of Nashville Firewood, also a second-generation business, said he had to turn away potential customers in the frenzy for firewood.
“They would say, ‘Can I get wood delivered today?’” Mr. Hite said. “‘Is there any way we can do that?’ I would say, ‘I’m sorry. We can’t do that. We’re two weeks out on delivery.’”
This time of year on a normal day, his business would typically sell four to 10 stacks of firewood that are four feet wide and eight feet long, a quantity known as a rick. But when the ice storm hit Nashville in late January, knocking out power to more than 200,000 electric customers, his company was selling as many as 25 ricks a day.
“It got crazy — and we still haven’t fully recovered,” Mr. Hite said, adding that he still had a backlog of 60 orders.
This winter has been prolific, less so for setting records for cold and snowfall, but in another way, said Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist for AccuWeather.
“It’s going to be remembered for the persistency of substantial cold,” he said.
From Jan. 15 through Feb. 8, the heating energy demand was significantly above the long-term average in a number of cities — 47 percent in Atlanta, 40 percent in Raleigh, N.C., 25 percent in Dallas and 17 percent in New York, according to AccuWeather.
The demand is measured in what are known as heating degree days, a formula subtracting the average daily temperature from a home’s base-line temperature of 65 degrees.
“It was accompanied by multiple snow and ice storms, including snow and ice storms in places across the southern part of the United States, where they’re less common and have greater impact,” Mr. Porter said.
In the Northeast, high temperatures were well below normal during a 10-day stretch that ended on Feb. 1, according to Samantha Borisoff, a climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center.
At Kennedy International Airport in New York, for example, the high temperature never reached 25 degrees for six days, tying a record.
On Jan. 24, the day before a winter storm buried much of the Northeast in snow, Woodbourne Firewood had its highest-grossing sales day in the history of the company, which was started in New York in 2022, said Mr. Heby, 35, the owner.
He said the company sold seven full cords of wood, units that are eight feet long, four feet tall and four feet deep, enough to fill a tractor-trailer and generating $10,356 in revenue in one day.
“We were breaking records,” Mr. Heby said.
Most of the wood the company sells is mixed hardwood that is dried in a kiln, which allows it to burn hotter and produce less smoke than naturally cured wood.
Customers sometimes have specific requests for cherry, hickory, oak, ash or other types of wood. Some choose based on aroma, aesthetics, burning time or other factors, including whether they plan to use it for cooking.
Grahm Leitner, 48, a logging contractor and forester from Waterbury, Vt., said the number of days spent logging in a given year is about half of what it was in the 1980s, especially because of climate change.
“Here in the Northeast, we’ve had a succession of warm winters and also wet summers, which really limited access to the woods for logging,” he said.
Firewood is not particularly profitable for the logging industry, which is aging, he said.
“As the supply tightens, the price is going to get higher,” Mr. Leitner said.
Daniel Moznett, director of sales and marketing for Duraflame, the fire log manufacturer, said the company had also noticed an increased demand for its products.
Sales figures were not available from Duraflame, a private company, but Mr. Moznett, citing data from the research firm Circana, said that fire log sales in grocery stores had surged 63 percent in dollars and 57 percent in units the week before major U.S. storms hit in late January.
“Pretty much anything that burns, consumers are looking to stay warm with,” he said.
Mr. Moznett said that Duraflame was keeping pace with the demand, and that big-box stores were reliable about keeping large quantities of fire logs in stock. Smaller retailers were a different story, according to Mr. Moznett, who said Duraflame advises them against waiting until the last minute before a storm to replenish their inventory.
“These folks,” he said, “are going to come in and clean you out.”
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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