TEXAS (US) – A historic winter storm has left at least 21 people losing their lives, with millions of Texans without power. It developed into tornadoes, which headed to US Southeast on Tuesday.
Officials in Texas faced flak as the state energy grid intermittently saw failures, prompting rolling blackouts. Energy companies were finding it difficult to meet escalating demand.
University student Corbin Antu said, “This is my first time snowboarding out in Lubbock. Trust me, it’s not disappointing. There is so much powder out on the ground it feels like it’s Colorado almost.”
At least 21 people have died in Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky and Missouri including four people, who were killed in a house fire in Sugar Land, Texas, where the power had gone, according to police and local media.
President Joe Biden gave assurance to the governors of states that the federal government is ready to offer if there are any emergency resources needed, the White House said in a statement.
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said at a midday news conference that 1.3 million people in his city continue to be without power. The city is relying on businesses that still have power, which could open its gateways as warming centers.
“It’s critically, critically important to get the power restored as quickly as possible. It’s priority number one!” Turner said.
Officials in south Texas gave cautionary messages to citizens to not bring grills or propane heaters indoors. Hospitals have had people coming for treating carbon monoxide poisoning as they tried to heat icy homes using those items.
Turner said vaccination centers in Houston would be closed on Wednesday and probably Thursday. The Texas Department of State Health Services said vaccine shipments around the state would see a delay.
Department spokesman Douglas Loveday said by email, adding, “No one wants to put vaccine at risk by attempting to deliver it in dangerous conditions. it is not safe for people to be out across much of Texas.”
The deep freeze affected operations at the Houston Ship channel and put a curb on the Permian in West Texas, the nation’s largest oil field. Several oil refineries remained offline.
Storms dumped snow and ice from Ohio to the Rio Grande through the long Presidents Day holiday weekend. It is expected that the weather will go worse and have much of the United States under its clutches through Friday. Forecasters predicted up to 4 inches of snow and freezing rain from the southern Plains into the Northeast.
“We’re calling it Storm System No. 2, with very similar placement to the previous storm,” said meteorologist Lara Pagano of the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
An Arctic air mass pushed temperatures to historic lows on Tuesday, Pagano said. In Lincoln, Nebraska, a reading of minus 31 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 35 degrees Celsius) on Tuesday broke open a record set in 1978 of minus 18F (minus 27C).
In typically toasty Dallas-Fort Worth, minus 1F (minus 17C) broke a record set in 1903 of 12F (minus 11C).
“It’s just dangerous,” Pagano said.
More than 4.4 million power outages in Texas alone forced authorities to shut down inoculation sites and were struggling to use 8,400 vaccines, which required subzero refrigeration before they spoiled after a backup generator failed, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said.
Meteorologist Jeremy Grams of the weather service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said in the Southeast, a low-pressure system that developed along the Arctic front triggered storms that unleashed at least four tornadoes. One ripped through the Florida Panhandle and two through southwestern Georgia on Monday.
The fourth, most severe twister left three dead and ravaged homes after it swept overnight through North Carolina’s coastal Brunswick County in the state’s southeastern corner between Wilmington and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the local sheriff’s office said early on Tuesday.