Tracking 'major' winter storm: Half foot of snow possible in Northeast; 500K still without power in Texas

Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY

POINT PLEASANT BEACH, N.J. – Another "major" storm threatened to bring more snow and ice across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic on Thursday as winter storm warnings extended as far south as weather-weary Texas.

More than half a million customers in Texas were still without power early Thursday after frigid temperatures kicked large shares of the state's power plants off its grid this week. Across the U.S, more than 1.1 million people were out of power Thursday, with Louisiana, Alabama and Oregon also experiencing widespread outages. Earlier in the week, more than 4 million in Texas alone didn't have electricity.

As many as 30 people have died this week, including from fire or carbon monoxide poisoning while struggling to find warmth inside their homes.

While temperatures were rising some in the middle of the country, "abnormally cold temperatures will hang around through the end of the work week," the National Weather Service said.

The heaviest snow will fall in parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, with isolated patches getting up to a foot of accumulation, the Weather Service said.

"Significant and disruptive" ice was expected further south, which could bring up to half an inch of accumulation in North Carolina and southern Virginia, forecasters said. "The result will be dangerous travel conditions, numerous power outages, and extensive tree damage."

In New York City, forecasters were anticipating snow to bring up to 8 inches by Friday and a "light glaze of ice" over the New York and New Jersey region. Flurries of snow were already blanketing the Jersey Shore on Thursday morning.

Farther north, the storm is expected to drop half a foot of snow from the Hudson Valley to the southern parts of New England, the Weather Service said.

"This storm and its predecessor a couple of days earlier, accompanied by once-in-a-generation outbreak of frigid air, has left behind an absolute mess in the South Central states and is on the move," said AccuWeather Chief On-Air Meteorologist Bernie Rayno.

Meanwhile, freezing temperatures lingered on Thursday in parts of Texas, where more than 568,000 were without power to heat their homes Thursday morning.

"My elderly family members have had to live off candles and hot stoves for the last couple days," said Bertha Rendon, who has been living with her aunt and uncle in East Austin this week. "That's when it really hit me. I mean, I'm young — I'm 41 years old — and I can take this, but they can't. So many people in my area are going through the same thing."

The cold weather also damaged infrastructure and pipes, forcing officials to warn 7 million people, a quarter of the state's population, to boil drinking water before use.

In Austin, some hospitals were facing low water pressure and no heat. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott urged Texans to turn off their water, if possible, to prevent damage to the water system and pipes.

Toby Baker, executive director of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said people have been letting their faucets drip to prevent frozen pipes, and frozen lines have led to low water pressure across the state.

'Massive failure': Why are millions of people in Texas still without power?

Grid manager Electric Reliability Council of Texas said late Wednesday that it had restored approximately 8,000 megawatts, or about 1.6 million households, since the morning.

"We are working around the clock to restore power to Texans," said ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness. "We made progress today, but it will not be good enough until every person has their power back."

ERCOT said it hoped to have enough power restored by Thursday that local utilities could rotate outages rather than keeping power off for extended periods of time. But managers declined to say exactly when electricity would be fully restored, saying that the main factor in coming days will be the cold weather.

Warmer weather could allow frigid power facilities to roar back to life, restore natural gas production, open up roads for skilled workers to make power repairs and cut demand from consumers, ERCOT managers said.

The power outages have prompted Abbott to call for reform earlier this week to ERCOT. Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees interstate electricity transmission, and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which oversees reliability across the U.S., Mexico and Canada, announced earlier this week they would be launching an inquiry into the the bulk-power system.

Areas near the U.S.-Mexico border were bracing for around 3 to 6 inches of snow Thursday. An inch to less than an inch was expected in San Antonio and Austin, forecasters said.

'An electrical island': Texas has dodged federal regulation for years by having its own power grid

More: Texas mayor who wrote 'only the strong will survive' amid deadly winter storm says he has resigned

In Dallas, the Weather Service said, "the worst of the weather is behind us." But roads will remain dangerous as they partially melt and refreeze. "This means more black ice and bumpy ruts through Saturday."

However, some warmer weather was in sight. Temperatures were forecast to be in the 50s in Dallas, Houston and Austin this weekend, with San Antonio expecting a 62-degree high on Sunday.

Elsewhere, in the Pacific Northwest, the Weather Service said snow in the range of 1 to 2 feet was expected to pile up along the Cascade Range. Mountain ranges in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming could see up to a foot of snow, the Weather Service added.

Power outages in the Portland, Oregon, area were the worst in 40 years, said Maria Pope, CEO of Portland General Electric. More than 350,000 customers at the peak of the storm lost power, and more than 100,000 in Oregon are still in the dark.

“These are the most dangerous conditions we’ve ever seen in the history of PGE,” said Dale Goodman, director of utility operations.

Contributing: Katie Hall and Asher Price, Austin American-Statesman; The Associated Press

Fact check: Frozen wind turbines don't deserve all the blame for Texas blackouts

Icicles hanging from a ceiling fan, a frosted cactus: Texas is frozen in surreal photos

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Winter storm update: Ice, snow Thursday; Texas outages, water shortage

Latest Stories

  • Dramatic Photos Show Thousands Of Stunned Sea Turtles Rescued From Texas Storm

    Turtles get cold-stunned when water temperatures fall. One group said it was taking care of more than 2,500 after the ice storm in Texas.

  • Laura Ingraham Is 'Sickened' By Joe Biden Calling Out Systemic Racism

    The Fox News host offered a stupefying response to the president's willingness to confront the nation's bigotry.

  • McConnell ‘laughed’ at Trump’s blistering attack and plans to ignore former president from now on

    Donald Trump had called McConnell a ‘dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack’

  • Naked hotel guests in South Korea shocked to discover mirrored glass in sauna was actually see-through

    A newlywed South Korean couple say they are undergoing counselling after being told that the windows in the luxurious spa of their five-star resort hotel were of one-way glass – only to discover on the final day of their stay that they had been walking around naked in full view of other guests. The husband posted a complaint online about the Grand Josun Jeju Hotel, on the island of Jeju off the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula. He claimed that his wife had used the sauna on several occasions during their stay and had not bothered to use a towel to cover up because they had been told that the windows of the second-floor sauna were mirrored. “While taking a walk around the hotel on the last day of our stay, we discovered the interior was visible from the outside”, the Korea Times quoted the man as saying. “We could even see the writing on a thermometer inside the sauna. “There were a number of other guests using the facilities, including minors”. The guests, who have not been named, added that windows onto the showers and toilet facilities were also not protected by one-way glass. “My wife and I are currently undergoing psychotherapy as we were so shocked after realising that we had taken a shower and used toilets that were visible from the outside”, the man said. Staff at the £520-a-night hotel compounded the problem, the man said, by claiming that blinds in the sauna had been rolled up “by mistake” and calling the police when they complained, accusing them of obstructing the property’s business. In response to criticism online, the operator of the hotel admitted to making “mistakes during operations”. In a message on the hotel’s website, Josun Hotels & Resorts said: “We deeply apologise for causing inconvenience to customers due to the omission of glass barrier coatings … in some areas of the women’s sauna”. The sauna has been closed until the situation can be remedied, it added.

  • The parts of Texas not on its ERCOT power grid appear to have weathered the freeze with few outages

    Texas is nearing the end of what Gov. Greg Abbott (R) called "a once-in-every-120-year cold front," but that doesn't entirely explain why more than a million households still had no electricity early Thursday, after three full days of below-freezing temperatures. Plenty of places in the world keep their power on in prolonged arctic weather, and so did parts of Texas. Those edges of Texas, including El Paso, "are primarily in areas outside of those supported by ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the electric grid for 90 percent of the state and operates separately from federal oversight and regulation," KHOU 11 Houston reported Wednesday night. After the 2011 winter freeze, El Paso Electric, on the Western Interconnect grid, spent heavily to "winterize our equipment and facilities so they could stand minus-10 degree weather for a sustained period of time," Eddie Gutierrez, an El Paso Electric spokesman, told KHOU. So this year, "we had about three thousand people that were out during this period, a thousand of them had outages that were less than five minutes." On the other side of Texas, near the Louisiana border, the city of Beaumont also appears to have weather the storm without massive outages. Entergy, which powers Beaumont on the Eastern Interconnect grid, told KHOU it also winterized its infrastructure after the 2011 storm. Weatherizing power generation and extraction equipment is voluntary in Texas, though the state legislature will probably revisit that strategy when it dissects ERCOT this year. More stories from theweek.comTrump comes out of hidingTexas governor walks back Fox News comments on Green New Deal, says gas, coal failed in Texas freezeThe Texas power grid failed mostly due to natural gas. Republicans are blaming wind turbines.

  • As A Young Black Girl, I Loved My Grandfather. Then I Found Out He'd Been A KKK Member.

    "I had no idea the Klan had such a powerful hold in Colorado until I found confirmation about my grandfather and began researching."

  • Bill O'Reilly Asks Where Is The Rise In White Supremacy, Gets Well And Truly Ratioed

    The disgraced former Fox News host's rhetorical question backfired.

  • Texans shelter in furniture store during brutal winter storm, as no end is in sight for days-long power outages

    The governor is launching an investigation into the company managing the state’s power grid

  • Coalition with Greens looks a tricky prospect, Bavarian leader says

    The German Greens' policy platform is not currently suitable for a coalition with the CDU/CSU conservative alliance, the leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) said on Wednesday, adding that the smaller liberals would be a better partner. Markus Soeder, a potential CDU/CSU chancellor candidate in September's national election, was responding to comments by a prominent Greens politician who took aim at detached family homes and urged municipalities to back more economical housing. "This is actually the typical left-wing face of the Greens, we don't really want that," Soeder told a traditional 'political Ash Wednesday' virtual gathering of the CSU.

  • Elderly Asian Woman Called Racial Slurs, Needs 5-10 Stitches After Attack at Bakery in Queens

    On Wednesday afternoon, an unidentified man wearing a red jacket verbally assaulted and physically shoved Maggie Cheng’s mother on Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing, Queens. The New York Police Department told NextShark that the woman was waiting at a bakery when the suspect approached her.

  • These Kitchen Gadgets Make Cooking Look Good

    We've rounded up seven of the best-designed small kitchen appliances to grace your countertopsOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Jimmy Kimmel Gives Trump Supporters An Uncomfortable Truth About The Ex-President

    The late-night host tells Trump's fans how the former president really feels about them.

  • Ted Cruz admits ‘I’ve got no defence’ over tweets mocking California power cuts

    ‘California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilisation, like having reliable electricity,’ Cruz had tweeted, in posts that have been widely shared amid Texas’s current predicament

  • "Politically isolating": White House issues obstruction warning to GOP

    Mike Donilon, senior adviser to President Biden, argues in a memo to White House senior staff that GOP opposition to the COVID rescue package would shrink the party's already declining national support. What they're saying: "There seems to be a growing conventional wisdom that it is either politically smart — or, at worst, cost-free — for the GOP to adopt an obstructionist, partisan, base-politics posture," Donilon writes in the two-page memo, obtained by Axios. "However, there is lots of evidence that the opposite is true: ... this approach has been quite damaging to them."Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.Between the lines: The memo cites a Morning Consult poll showing a Biden approval rating of 62% with registered voters. Just 23% of registered voters think the Republican Party is going in the right direction, while 63% say the party is on the wrong track.Other data points: Tens of thousands of Republicans across the country have switched party affiliation since the Capitol riot, the N.Y. Times reports. The Economist/YouGov polling finds a decline in voters calling themselves Republicans since November (from 42% to 37%)."[Y]ou see a party shrinking its appeal in this country — not growing it," Donilon writes. "Opposing President Biden’s American Rescue Plan only exacerbates Republicans' predicament. ... [T]he GOP is putting itself at odds with a rescue package supported overwhelmingly by the American people."Polls put support for Biden's American Rescue Plan at 68% (Quinnipiac) or more.Donilon called opposition to the plan "politically isolating": "The country is looking for action. For progress. For solutions. On COVID. On the economy. You see it and hear it all over the country. Voters are hurting."Read the memo. More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free

  • Ghislaine Maxwell 'physically abused' by correctional officer during routine search in prison

    Ghislaine Maxwell has been “physically abused” by prison guards, is losing her hair and is “withering to a shell of her former self,” her lawyer has claimed in a letter to a New York Judge. The 59-year-old former partner of billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein is awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, but her lawyers are asking for her to be released on bail citing intolerable jail conditions. "Recently, out of view of the security camera, Ms. Maxwell was placed in her isolation cell and physically abused during a pat down search," wrote Bobbi Sternheim. “When Ms. Maxwell recoiled in pain and when she said she would report the mistreatment, she was threatened with disciplinary action,” she added. A week later the same team of guards "ordered" Maxwell into a shower "to clean, sanitise, and scrub the walls with a broom," the lawyer claimed. “She is withering to a shell of her former self – losing weight, losing hair, and losing her ability to concentrate,” Ms Sternheim wrote, in the letter addressed to New York judge Alison Nathan.

  • At the WH press briefing, deputy national security advisor gives an update on the SolarWinds hack

    During the White House press briefing on Wednesday deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology Anne Neuberger gave an update on the investigation into the SolarWinds hack, which officials say compromised government and private industry computer systems and was backed by Russia.

  • Gwyneth Paltrow Reveals She Is A COVID-19 Long-Hauler With 'Healing' Still To Do

    The Oscar-winning actor and GOOP founder has been beset by what she called "long-tail" symptoms.

  • Trump on Hannity reveals he only befriended Rush Limbaugh ‘when I got word he was with us all the way’

    Former president says he went on to play a lot of golf with the late radio host. ‘When he hit the ball, he hit it a long way’

  • 'Now It's Coming Back to Bite Them': Democrats See an Opening in GOP Oversight of Texas Grid

    AUSTIN, Texas — For the Republicans who have run Texas state government for years, trying to undermine the Democrats who lead the state’s largest cities has been a blood sport for years. They have sought to overrule local officials on disputes involving everything from pandemic restrictions and plastic bag bans to protections for immigrants. But this week, the collapse of the state’s power grid gave Democrats a chance to turn the tables. With the state reeling from a rare winter storm that caused widespread power outages, Democrats have mobilized public anger over the Republicans’ oversight of the energy industry, opening a new front in their battle to erode the party’s dominance of every statewide office and both chambers of the Legislature. While Democrats have made important inroads in recent election cycles, Texas Republicans have staved off the kind of game-changing gains that flipped states like Arizona and Georgia. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times “Those in the Legislature and those in the executive branch of government have been spending too much time trying to run cities and counties and not enough tending to state issues,” said Sylvester Turner, the Democratic mayor of Houston, the largest city in Texas and the fourth-largest in the country. “And now it’s coming back to bite them. Before you can try to run my house, you’ve got to make sure you’re running your own.” Such appraisals come at a time when Greg Abbott, the Republican governor, was already under fire for his handling of the pandemic. Even before thawing freezers forced health officials in Houston to scramble this week to administer thousands of vaccine doses, Latino leaders in hard-hit South Texas were pleading with Abbott to allow city officials along the border to put into place stricter mitigation measures. At the same time, a steady drip of other scandals has focused scrutiny on the Republicans wielding power at the state level in Texas. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, remains under a cloud of legal trouble as he responds to abuse of power claims including a lawsuit by former aides who say he took bribes from a real estate developer. The Republican-dominated Texas Legislature is also no stranger to intrigue. In one episode, a secret audio recording in 2019 by a conservative activist showed Dennis Bonnen, the former speaker of the Texas House, plotting against fellow Republicans by seeking to enlist the support of hard-line activists to take them down in primary challenges. As attention shifts to the electricity crisis, Turner, the Houston mayor, figures among Democrats who have been sounding the alarm for years that the state’s power grid was at risk of failing. After a 2011 debacle in which a rare winter storm knocked out power around the state, Turner, then a state representative, warned the following year that state regulators were giving utilities too much leeway. Other Democrats around the state are now issuing calls for sweeping changes in the state oversight of the industry. “A lot of areas of Texas probably already felt like it was in an emergency before the blackout — COVID case numbers, peak hospital numbers and the vaccine scramble,” said Ana Sandoval, a Democrat and member of the San Antonio City Council. “State leaders need to take the blindfold off and realize energy is not just about economics. It’s a life-and-death issue.” Some Republicans are joining in the calls for greater accountability. Abbott declared reform of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s grid, an emergency item for the Legislature. State Rep. Dade Phelan, the Republican speaker of the Texas House, called for hearings to examine the factors contributing to the grid’s collapse. “People are suffering right now because we have failed,” said state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, a retired military officer regarded as one of the most conservative members in the House. Like millions of other Texans, Tinderholt, his wife and two young children were left without power in their home in Arlington, and took refuge in a hotel. “And when I say ‘we’, I’m talking about the Legislature, ERCOT and the power companies,” Tinderholt said. Much of the rest of the United States features electricity systems that are interconnected, but Texas has long stood out for having its own grid. While the system has been praised by hard-line conservatives as an example of the state’s go-it-alone mettle, the unusual setup originated when the Democrats who once wielded control over Texas politics sought to shield companies in the state from federal regulators overseeing interstate electricity sales. The Republicans who rose to power in Texas in the 1990s had their own ideas about turbocharging the electricity industry. Around that time, Texas energy giants like Enron (before its spectacular collapse in a 2001 accounting scandal) were winning plaudits for aggressive moves into power markets around the United States and the world. George W. Bush, while governor of Texas before becoming president, overhauled the Texas electricity market in 1999 with a bid to introduce greater competition in parts of the industry. But energy experts say that state regulators appointed by the Republican governors in power for decades in Texas have been loath to do anything that might raise electricity prices. “They wound up basically creating an old-style Soviet bureau,” said Ed Hirs, an energy economics lecturer at the University of Houston, referring to ERCOT. “This is a controlled flight into terrain.” Republicans have overseen the Texas energy industry for decades, but Abbott, along with other prominent Texas conservatives, has sought to deflect responsibility by assigning blame for the storm crisis on renewable energy sources like wind and solar that were hobbled by the cold snap. In an appearance on Fox News, Abbott asserted that the reliance on wind and solar “thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power in a statewide basis.” Still, such a claim runs counter to Abbott’s own role and that of his Republican predecessors, like Rick Perry and Bush, in overseeing the growth of renewable energy sources in Texas. Earlier in the week, Abbott himself attributed the power failure in part to freezing in natural gas transmission systems. Wind generation in Texas, which still accounts for a relatively small fraction of electricity production in the state, actually exceeded projections in recent days. ERCOT officials say limited supplies of natural gas, along with frozen instruments at the natural gas, coal and nuclear facilities that dwarf renewables in supplying Texas’ electricity, are the main factors in the crisis. Still, prominent Republicans like Perry, the former Texas governor and energy secretary in the Trump administration, have blamed renewables. In a blog post on the page of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, Perry sought to warn Democrats against trying to introduce greater oversight of the electricity industry. “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” Perry said. Beyond arguing over energy sources, Abbott, who succeeded Perry in 2014, was already on the defensive over complaints by Democrats and even some Republicans over the insular way in which he names people to state boards and commissions. Legislation aiming to put an end to the governor’s so-called pay-for-play nominations for donors has failed to advance in the Republican-controlled chambers. Abbott appointed all three of the commissioners on the Public Utility Commission of Texas that oversees ERCOT. As for ERCOT itself, the leader of its board does not live in Texas but in Michigan; its vice-chair is a professor who lives in California and teaches at a university in Germany. “No one should be pretending that the cause of this catastrophe is some mysterious entity that is somehow detached from state government,” said Rep. Chris Turner, leader of the 67 Democrats in the Texas House. “This entire episode represents a catastrophic failure of leadership.” Still, even some Republicans who have demanded answers about the electricity crisis view things differently. Kel Seliger, a former mayor of Amarillo and now a member of the Texas Senate, cautioned about making drastic changes. “I don’t think they planned for something that has the look of a catastrophe for a lot of people,” Seliger said. “How much generation would it take and how much would it cost the taxpayers to ensure that this didn’t happen? Then you have to weigh the costs against how often do we have this kind of thing.” But with the power outages dragging on for several days in parts of the state, Democratic leaders are openly voicing exasperation. “I don’t know what this means either,” Eric Johnson, the mayor of Dallas, said on Twitter in response to a statement by ERCOT using jargon like “load shed” — a term referring to the deliberate shutdown of part of a power system to avoid a broader failure — to explain the outages. “People are suffering, and they need some idea of what to expect.” This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company

  • UK facing fresh diplomatic tensions with United Arab Emirates over 'kidnapped' Princess Latifa

    Dubai’s ruler is unlikely to be rattled by BBC Panorama’s explosive documentary about the alleged kidnapping of his daughter, as he insists that she was brought home as part of a “rescue mission.” But the saga of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Princess Latifa could quickly become a diplomatic nightmare for the wealthy Gulf state. UN officials have already begun poring over the latest video smuggled out of Dubai by the princesses’ allies, in which she claims she is being held against her will in a barricaded compound with no access to lawyers or medical help. They could then decide to pass the case on to the UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention for a high profile and potentially embarrassing investigation into the 71-year-old Dubai ruler. It may also heap unwelcome strain on the wealthy Gulf state’s relationship with Britain, which has a strong emphasis on security co-operation, investment and tourism.