Texas is heading into a fourth day dealing with an ice storm that has caused power outages, grounded flights and led to fatal crashes on slick roads.
Cold weather has gripped the landscape in north and central Texas, as well as parts of neighboring Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee since the storm swept through the region on Monday. The ice has brought down trees and power lines and wreaked havoc on transportation across the region.
“Today is the last day and then things should be looking up,” said Bob Oravec, a senior forecaster with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center branch. “About half an inch of ice is in North and Central Texas and that’s a lot of ice; it causes problems with the power grid.”
The ice storm is providing a painful reminder of how the southern United States is not immune to extreme winter weather. The latest cold snap comes nearly two years after a deadly storm in Texas caused the power system to fail, leaving millions of residents without power for hours and even days. State officials have made several reforms to the grid since then, including strengthening natural gas plants and pipelines to withstand extreme weather.
As of early Thursday, more than 407,000 customers in Texas were without power, along with nearly 100,000 more in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Florida, according to PowerOutage.us.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has said there is plenty of power on the state’s grid and blamed the outages on downed trees, according to Tweets. He has also asked people to stay off the roads.
At least 8 people have died in accidents since the storm began, according to the Associated Press.
The ice has also caused airlines to ground planes. More than 700 flights have been canceled in and around the United States, most of them in Dallas, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking company.
