The storm highlighted the need for safe, reliable natural gas utilities and reliable generation capacity when our customers experienced temperatures as low as 27 degrees below zero, setting numerous all-time record lows across our communities.
As an example, Lincoln, Nebraska reported 11 straight days of temperatures below zero in February with lows of the minus 20s.
Given the unprecedented and unforeseeable market pricing for natural gas in February, we immediately supplemented our liquidity with additional short-term financing by securing an $800 million term loan on favorable terms.
We also reaffirmed our 2022 earnings guidance and we remain confident in our long-term growth targets, including 5% to 7% earnings growth for 2023 through 2025 and at least 5% annual dividend growth.
We plan on capital investments in more than $3 billion through 2025 and we expect to identify and develop incremental projects.
We delivered earnings per share of $1.54 compared to $1.59 as adjusted in Q1 2020.
The net storm impacts were $0.15 per share, which more than offset weather favorability and the benefit of new rates.
We estimate weather benefited earnings by $0.07 per share compared to normal.
For the quarter, heating degree days were 4% higher than normal at our electric utilities and 3% higher than normal at our gas utilities, attributable primarily to extreme cold in February, offsetting warmer than normal weather in January and March.
Compared to Q1 2020, the weather impact was favorable by $0.11 per share, given a warmer than normal first quarter heating season last year.
In the first quarter, we incurred approximately $571 million of incremental cost to serve our customers.
This includes $559 million of deferred utility fuel costs we booked as a regulatory asset.
In the first quarter, we booked storm-related net expenses of $12.55 million pre-tax or $0.15 per share after tax.
The largest contributor was $8.2 million of non-recoverable incremental gas purchase costs at Black Hills Energy Services, which serves 52,000 of our regulated utility customers in Nebraska and Wyoming through the Choice Gas program.
For our electric businesses, the impact to our wholesale power margin sharing of $3.2 million was partially offset by $1.7 million of power generation benefits.
We also incurred $2.1 million of fuel costs that are outside of our regulatory cost recovery mechanisms, primarily in Montana, where we serve two industrial customers pursuant to contracts.
In February, we immediately implemented strategies to mitigate the $0.15 earnings per share impact from Uri over the remainder of the year through cost management, ongoing wholesale power marketing opportunities and identified regulatory proceedings.
We credited over $9 million of tax reform benefits, which lowered revenue and had an offsetting income tax benefit, resulting in minimal overall impact to first quarter results.
At the end of April, we had approximately $530 million of available liquidity on our revolving credit facility.
In February, we entered into an $800 million, nine-month term loan to bolster our liquidity in light of the increased fuel costs related to Storm Uri.
We repaid $200 million of that term loan at quarter-end and are developing the appropriate refinancing strategy for the remaining $600 million as we finalized Storm Uri recovery mechanisms.
New debt and deferred recovery of fuel cost temporarily increased our debt to total capitalization ratio to 62% at the end of March.
We expect to issue $100 million to $120 million in 2021 and $60 million to $80 million in 2022 through our at-the-market equity offering program.
In 2020, we proudly marked 50 consecutive years of annual dividend increases, one of the longest track records in our industry.
Since 2016 we have increased our dividend at an average annual rate of 6.6%.
Looking forward, we anticipate increasing our dividend by more than 5% annually through 2025 while maintaining our 50% to 60% payout target.

Summary:
We also reaffirmed our 2022 earnings guidance and we remain confident in our long-term growth targets, including 5% to 7% earnings growth for 2023 through 2025 and at least 5% annual dividend growth.
We plan on capital investments in more than $3 billion through 2025 and we expect to identify and develop incremental projects.
We delivered earnings per share of $1.54 compared to $1.59 as adjusted in Q1 2020.
For the quarter, heating degree days were 4% higher than normal at our electric utilities and 3% higher than normal at our gas utilities, attributable primarily to extreme cold in February, offsetting warmer than normal weather in January and March.