150M people under winter advisories as ‘unprecedented’ storm stretches across 25 states; Texas sees power outages
An “unprecedented” winter storm continued its assault on the nation Monday, leaving millions without power in Texas and wreaking travel havoc across a wide swath of the central and southern U.S. due to the heavy snow and ice.
As of Monday morning, more than 150 million people were under a winter storm warning or winter weather advisory in 25 states, stretching over 2,000 miles from southern Texas to northern Maine, the National Weather Service said.
Bitter, record-smashing cold accompanied the storm across the central U.S. Hundreds of daily record low temperatures have been or will be broken during this prolonged “polar plunge,” the weather service said, “with some February and even all-time low temperature records in jeopardy.” More than 50 million people could see temperatures dip below zero during the next several days, according to the Capital Weather Gang.
Power outages were widespread Monday. In Texas alone, more than 2.7 million customers were in the dark as of 10 a.m. local time, according to poweroutage.us, a utility tracking site.
Rotating power outages were initiated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, Monday morning, meaning thousands went without electricity for short periods as temperatures fell into the teens near Dallas and Houston.
“We urge Texans to put safety first,” the council tweeted as it urged residents to reduce electricity use. ERCOT manages the flow of electric power in the state.
Matt Varble in the Dallas suburb of Las Colinas told The Dallas Morning News his power had gone out a couple of times Monday morning. The second time, it went out about 3:30 a.m. and hadn’t returned as of 7 a.m.
“It’s starting to get very cold inside my house,” Varble told the newspaper. “I lived in the north for a very long time and nothing like this has ever happened when I lived in New York, Ohio and Illinois.”
Houston, where temperatures hit the 70s last Tuesday, saw readings in the teens Monday morning, prompting officials to advise residents to prepare for hazardous roads that could be similar to those experienced after a Category 5 hurricane.
In Texas, the storm could truly be a “once in a generation” type event when factoring in the brutally cold conditions, AccuWeather meteorologist Brandon Buckingham said.
San Angelo, Texas, had its snowiest day ever recorded Sunday, the weather service said, with 10.1 inches reported in the city.
Thundersnow was reported early Monday as far south as the Gulf Coast in Galveston, Texas, and Lake Charles, Louisiana, Weather.com reported. Read more from USA
