DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. — With more winter weather headed our way and cold temperatures sticking around, demand for electricity is skyrocketing as people try to stay warm.

On Tuesday, Entergy Mississippi conducted rolling outages in Desoto, Washington, Hinds, Adams, Lincoln, Bolivar, Rankin, Madison, Leake and Warren counties that began around 7 p.m. Nearly 19,000 customers were in the dark for 46 minutes to an hour

The company asked everyone to do their part so they wouldn’t have to keep doing that.

Bridgette Hays of Horn Lake, Mississippi, said she’s doing everything she can to stay warm and conserve energy at the same time.

“Put towels underneath your doors and on your window sills,” she suggested. “We do that, we do all of that. You know it’s cold, everybody is cold.”

Hayes, like other Entergy customers, is now being asked to dig a little deeper and limit electric consumption.

“We’re kind of all in this together and what we’re trying to avoid is being completely without warmth, without power,” said Mara Hartmann with Entergy Mississippi.

She said customers are being asked to make sacrifices now it order to avoid what’s called temporary interruptions of electrical services.

“Unfortunately it will happen pretty quickly because they are trying to manage it but if it gets to a critical state they will reach out and immediately let us know and we will reach out and let our customers know through all the many avenues we have available to us,” said Hartmann.

They suggested you set your thermostat to 68 degrees and avoid using unnessary electric appliances, especially during peak hours from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Vivian Smith said she’s willing to help but had concerns.

“I have an 82-year-old mom that lives with me so I kind of turn the thermostat down and she’s using her electric blanket. We can try to cut back a little bit on the power,” she said.

Entergy said people with illnesses and the elderly would not be impacted by the power interupptions.