Thousands of annoyed Texans shivered in houses with out energy for a second day Thursday, most of them round booming Austin, and fading hopes of a fast repair stirred grim reminiscences of a lethal 2021 blackout after an icy winter storm throughout the southern U.S.
The freeze has been blamed for at the least 10 site visitors deaths on slick roads this week in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. And whilst Texas lastly started thawing Thursday, a brand new Artic entrance from Canada was headed towards the northern U.S. and threatening New England with doubtlessly the coldest climate in a long time. Wind chills may dive under minus 50 (minus 45 Celsius).
In Austin, metropolis officers in contrast the injury from fallen bushes and iced-over energy strains to tornadoes as they got here underneath mounting criticism for sluggish repairs and shifting timelines to revive energy.
“We had hoped to make more progress today,“ said Jackie Sargent, general manager of Austin Energy. ”And that merely has not occurred.”
Across Texas greater than 280,000 prospects had been with out energy Thursday night time, down from 430,000 earlier within the day, in keeping with PowerOutage.us. The failures had been most widespread in Austin, the place impatience was rising amongst 150,000 prospects almost two days after the electrical energy first went out, which for a lot of additionally means no warmth. Power failures have affected about 30% of consumers within the metropolis of almost one million at any given time since Wednesday.
By Thursday night time, Austin officers backtracked on early estimates that energy can be absolutely restored by Friday night, saying the extent of the injury was worse than initially calculated and that they may not predict when all of the lights could come again on.
Allison Rizzolo, who misplaced energy in Austin, instructed KEYE-TV that she wished there have been extra readability from town on what to do or count on.
“I get that there’s a fine line between preparedness and panic, but I wish they’d been more aggressive in their communications,” Rizzolo mentioned.
For many Texans, it was the second time in three years {that a} February freeze — temperatures had been within the 30s Thursday with wind chills under freezing — precipitated extended outages and uncertainty over when the lights would come again on.
Unlike the 2021 blackouts in Texas, when tons of of individuals died after the state’s grid was pushed to the brink of total failure due to a scarcity of technology, the outages in Austin this time had been largely the results of frozen tools and ice-burdened bushes and limbs falling on energy strains. But the variations had been little consolation to Austin residents and companies that additionally misplaced energy for days two years in the past.
Among these nonetheless with out energy Thursday was the Central Texas Food Bank, in keeping with Travis County Judge Andy Brown, the county’s high elected official.
“They have 21 counties to serve. They’ve been down for at least three days now. There’s a lot of need that they have,” Brown mentioned.
School techniques within the Dallas and Austin space, plus many in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee, closed Thursday as snow, sleet and freezing rain continued to push via. In Austin, faculties is not going to open till subsequent week on the earliest.
Hundreds extra flights had been canceled once more in Texas, though not as many as in earlier days.
Airport crews battled ice to maintain runways open. By Thursday morning, airways had canceled greater than 500 flights at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport — greater than 1 / 4 of all flights scheduled for the day. Still, that was down from about 1,300 cancellations on Wednesday and greater than 1,000 on Tuesday, in keeping with FlightAware.com.
Dozens extra flights had been canceled at Dallas Love Field and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
Another wave of frigid climate within the U.S. is on the horizon, with an Arctic chilly entrance anticipated to maneuver from Canada into the northern Plains and Upper Midwest and sweep into the Northeast by Friday.
In a briefing Thursday with the federal Weather Prediction Center, New Englanders had been warned that wind chills — the mixed impact of wind and chilly air on uncovered pores and skin — within the minus 50s “could be the coldest felt in decades.”
The robust winds and chilly air will create wind chills “rarely seen in northern and eastern Maine,” in keeping with an advisory from the National Weather Service workplace in Caribou, Maine.
Jay Broccolo, director of climate operations at an observatory on New Hampshire’s Mount Washington — which for many years held the world report for the quickest wind gust — mentioned Thursday that wind speeds may high 100 mph (160 kph).
“We take safety really seriously in the higher summits,” Broccolo mentioned, “and this weekend’s forecast is looking pretty gnarly, even for our standards.”
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Miller reported from Oklahoma City. Associated Press Airlines Writer Dave Koenig in Dallas and writers Kathy McCormack in Concord, N.H., and Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed to this report.
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