At least four dead as winter storms sweeps the nation, leaves 5 MILLION without power

At least six people people have died amid a dangerous winter storm system sweeping across the nation, which has also left nearly five million homes and businesses in Texas without power and caused a series of frightening tornadoes in the Southwest.

One person was killed in Kentucky when they lost control of their semi truck along the I-64 and collided with a guard rail, police said. The victim, 43-year-old grandmother Angel Johnson, was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected out of the vehicle.

In Louisiana, a 50-year-old man died in Lafayette Parish after slipping and falling on an ice-covered sidewalk and striking his head. 

Two people have also died in Texas from suspected cold exposure, including a 78-year-old man who fell in his front lawn and was stranded outside in the cold for several hours, and a 60-year-old homeless man in Houston who refused shelter and was later found dead at an overpass in east Harris County. 

The youngest of the victims was claimed in Tennessee, after a 10-year-old boy tragically fell into a frozen pond and drowned, officials said. The boy’s sister, 6, also fell through the ice and is currently in the hospital in critical condition.

All of the deaths have been linked to Winter Storm Uri, which has sent temperatures plunging across the Great Plains, causing widespread flight cancellations and closures of businesses.   

The record cold snap has seen caused arctic conditions in Texas, where wind turbines have frozen and wind chills have plummeted to a bitter -20F.

According to poweroutage.us, 4.38 million people in the Lone Star State alone are currently without power as of Monday night, while Oregon has seen more than 303,000 outages, and Louisiana more than 109,000.  

In Georgia and Florida, several homes and structures were damaged and at least four people were hurt, following a series of tornadoes that touched down across Monday afternoon.

As nightfall threatened to plummet temperatures again into single digits in Texas, officials warned that homes in the state still without power would likely not have heat until at least Tuesday. 

‘Things will likely get worse before they get better,’ said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in the county of nearly 5 million people around Houston.

The toll of the worsening conditions included the delivery of new COVID-19 vaccine shipments, which were expected to be delayed until at least midweek. Massive power outages across Houston included a facility storing 8,000 doses of Moderna vaccine, leaving health officials scrambling to find takers at the same time authorities were pleading for people to stay home.

Temperatures nosedived into the single-digits as far south as San Antonio, and homes that had already been without electricity for hours had no certainty about when the lights and heat would come back on, as the state’s overwhelmed power grid began imposing blackouts that are typically only seen in 100-degree Fahrenheit

‘We’re living through a really historic event going on right now,’ said Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, pointing to all of Texas under a winter storm warning and the extent of the freezing temperatures.

State officials said surging demand, driven by people trying to keep their homes warm, and cold weather knocking some power stations offline had pushed Texas’ system beyond the limits.

‘This weather event, it’s really unprecedented. We all living here know that,’ said Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. He defended preparations made by grid operators and described the demand on the system as record-setting.

‘This event was well beyond the design parameters for a typical, or even an extreme, Texas winter that you would normally plan for. And so that is really the result that we’re seeing,’ Woodfin said.

In Dallas, officials told residents to refrain from calling 911 to report power outages as the 911 call center became overwhelmed with power outage calls.

Elsewhere, frozen roads in Austin caused an 18-wheeler to careen out of control. A man nearly lost his life, jumping out of the way just seconds before a car lost control and crashed into a police cruiser, according to CBS. 

A half-dozen Houston residents are being treated for carbon monoxide poisoning after using a charcoal grill to warm their home, officials said. 

Cy-Fair Fire Department revealed six people were transported to the hospital after using the grill for approximately four hours. Two were said to be in critical condition. Four children, between the ages of five and 10, were among those hospitalized.    

‘Please remember to never run a generator or grill inside your home,’ the department tweeted. ‘These produce carbon monoxide, which is a deadly, colorless and odorless gas.’

The historic storm has caused a series of problems across the country.

In Vermont, firefighters scrambled to recuse a young man from frigid waters after he fell through the ice.

Roads in Tennessee roads were remarked to have turned into ‘ice rinks’ after frozen precipitation fell, causing a series of accidents across the state. 

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, temperatures in part of the state dipped below 20 degrees for five days straight for only the third time ever. With another storm moving in, crews worked frantically to clear snow from the roads.

In Louisiana, the cold caused a transformer to blow, ripping a fireball through power lines.

Severe weather fueled by Storm Uri also damaged homes and other structures in Georgia and Florida, leaving at least four people hurt.

An ‘extremely dangerous’ tornado touched down in Georgia in Damascus on Monday afternoon, a small community in the southwest corner of the state. 

Early County Fire Department Capt. Bobby Wimberly said initial reports from units that responded indicated one person was injured and several homes destroyed.

‘We don’t know the full details yet, they’re still on scene,’ Wimberly told Weather.com at 5:30pm ET. 

Tornadoes also struck in Tallahassee and Panama City, where damage was reported at a park and at a resort. Officials said three people were transported to hospital after ceiling tiles fell at the Boardwalk Condo, amid the high winds.   

Another tornado also caused minor damage in Lake City, located in north Florida.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said that ‘over 150 million Americans are currently under winter storm warnings, ice storm warnings, winter storm watches, or winter weather advisories as impactful winter weather continues from coast to coast’.

‘This impressive onslaught of wicked wintry weather across much of the Lower 48 (states) is due to the combination of strong Arctic high pressure supplying sub-freezing temperatures and an active storm track escorting waves of precipitation,’ the NWS added. 

Besides Texas, weather-related emergencies have also been declared in Alabama, Oregon, Oklahoma, Kansas, Kentucky and Mississippi. The NWS said record low temperatures were expected in much of the country.

‘Hundreds of daily low maximum and minimum temperatures have been/will be broken during this prolonged ‘polar plunge,’ with some February and even all-time low temperature records in jeopardy,’ the NWS said.   

In Texas, rotating power outages were initiated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) early Monday morning, meaning hundreds of thousands went without electricity for short periods as temperatures fell into the teens near Dallas and 20s around Houston.

‘We urge Texans to put safety first,’ ERCOT tweeted as it urged residents to reduce electricity use. The council manages the flow of electric power in the state. ‘Traffic lights and other infrastructure may be temporarily without power,’ the council said.

The council described the rotating outages as a ‘last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole,’ adding that utility transmission companies are tasked with determining how to reduce demand on the system.

‘Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now,’ ERCOT President and CEO Bill Magness said in a statement.

Around 5,000 Oklahoma Gas & Electric customers were without power overnight, and Entergy Arkansas logged about 3,000 outages. Both states have much smaller populations compared with Texas.

Officials in Houston had warned people to prepare for outages and hazardous roads – conditions similar to what residents might see in the wake of a Category 5 hurricane.

‘There (have) been numerous reports of accidents from icing recently,’ National Weather Service (NWS) lead forecaster Bob Oravec said Monday. ‘I think there’s going to be a big threat today as the system pushes northeastward.’ 

Houston has opened up more warming facilities for its city’s homeless population. The city opened up one facility at the GRB Convention Center Sunday afternoon and now have more than 450 homeless sheltering there.

Officials said Monday that they still have the capacity for an additional 100 people. Each person entering the facility is being screened for COVID-19.

By midmorning, 3,000 flights had been canceled across the country, about 1,600 of them at Dallas/Fort Worth International and Bush Intercontinental airports in Texas.

At DFW, the temperature was 4F, about 3 degrees colder than Moscow. Accumulating ice between a tenth and a quarter of an inch was possible across eastern Louisiana, Mississippi, central Tennessee, Kentucky and over into the West Virginia and Ohio border region, Oravec said.

Officials said Bush Intercontinental Airport runways will remain closed until at least 1pm on Tuesday, as the region remains under the grip of subfreezing temperatures.  

The largest grocery store chain in Texas, H-E-B, also closed locations around Austin and San Antonio, cities that are unaccustomed to snow and have little resources to clear roads. The slow thaw and more frigid lows ahead was also taking a toll on Texas’ distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

State health officials said Texas, which was due to receive more than 400,000 additional vaccine doses this week, now does not expect deliveries to occur until at least Wednesday.

Several cities in the U.S. saw record lows as Arctic air remained over the central part of the country. 

In Minnesota, the Hibbing/Chisholm weather station registered -38F, while Sioux Falls, South Dakota, dropped to -26F.

In Kansas, where wind chills dropped to as low as -30F in some areas, Gov. Laura Kelly declared a state of disaster.

Most government offices and schools were closed for Presidents Day, and authorities pleaded with residents to stay home. Louisiana State Police reported that it had investigated nearly 75 weather-related crashes caused by a mixture of snow, sleet and freezing rain in the past 24 hours.

‘We already have some accidents on our roadways,’ Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said during a morning news conference. ‘It is slick and it is dangerous.’ 

The storm arrived over a three-day holiday weekend that has seen the most U.S. air travel since the period around New Year’s. 

More than 1 million people went through airport security checkpoints on Thursday and Friday. However, that was still less than half the traffic of a year ago, before the pandemic hit with full force.

The southern Plains had been gearing up for the winter weather for the better part of the weekend. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for all of the state´s 254 counties. Abbott, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson each activated National Guard units to assist state agencies with tasks including rescuing stranded drivers.

President Joe Biden also declared an emergency in Texas in a statement Sunday night. The declaration is intended to add federal aid to state and local response efforts.