Texas power problems linger as Arctic skies turn to New England

Another frigid wave hit the northern United States Friday as rising temperatures gave some hope to frustrated Texans shivering at home after days of losing power in a deadly winter storm. I was aiming.

The Arctic cold front was expected to move from Canada into the northern Plains and upper Midwest, and surge into the Northeast. In some areas, wind chill can drop below minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

In Austin, city officials likened the damage caused by fallen trees and frozen power lines to a tornado.

“We wanted to go further today,” said Jackie Sargent, general manager of Austin Energy.

More than 250,000 customers across Texas ran out of power early on Friday, down from 430,000 on Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us.

The failure was most widespread in Austin. Two days after the lights first went out, he was in a rush among some 126,000 customers. About 30% of customers in the city of nearly 1 million people were affected by the power outage any time since Wednesday.

By Thursday night, Austin officials had recanted early estimates that power would be fully restored by Friday night, saying the extent of the damage was worse than originally calculated, and that all the lights would be turned off when they did. He said he could no longer predict whether the light would come on again.

For many Texas people, it was the first time in three years that the February freeze caused extended power outages and uncertainty about when the lights would return. Temperatures were 30 degrees Fahrenheit–thursday wind chill was below freezing.

Unlike the 2021 blackout in Texas, when the state’s power grid was pushed to the brink of total failure due to lack of power generation, killing hundreds of people, the blackout in Austin this time will be It was mainly caused by frozen equipment and ice-covered trees. Limbs fall on power lines. But Austin residents and businesses were without power for a few days two years ago, and the difference offered little comfort.

At least 10 road fatalities on smooth roads in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma this week have been attributed to frost.

At a briefing Thursday with the Federal Weather Prediction Center, New Englanders said wind chill (the combined effect of wind and cold air on exposed skin) at minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 45 to minus 50 degrees Celsius) was “most You may feel cold,” he warned. in decades. ”

Strong winds and cold air will bring chills “rarely seen in northern and eastern Maine,” according to an advisory from the National Weather Service in Caribou, Maine.

Jay Broccolo, director of weather operations at the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire, said Thursday that wind speeds could exceed 100 miles per hour.

“We take safety at the higher summits very seriously,” Broccolo said.