Ice storm leaves hundreds of thousands of Texans without power

Thousands of Texans were without power Thursday after a ferocious ice storm and three consecutive days of frigid temperatures.

Statewide, nearly 380,000 households were without electricity as of late Thursday afternoon, according to Poweroutage. us, which tracks outages nationwide.

Outages were largely clustered in East and Central Texas.

More than 40,000 homes were without power in Tyler in East Texas and roughly 65,000 around Round Rock, north of Austin, according to Oncor’s outage map.

In the Austin area, about 150,000 homes were without electricity as of about 4 p.m. Thursday.

“Austin Energy is working to restore power as quickly and safely as possible, but challenging conditions may slow down these efforts,” the company said in a statement. “Crews are driving on icy roadways and working with frozen equipment.”

It said it could not yet provide a timeline for when electricity would be restored.

North Texas appeared to escape the worst of the power outages. At noon Thursday, about 12,000 customers in Dallas-fort Worth were without power, Oncor spokeswoman Kerri Dunn said.

Dangerous road conditions have slowed repairs, but emergency crews were responding as quickly and safely as possible, Dunn said.

Both state and energy officials said the outages were caused by falling tree limbs and downed power lines that buckled under ice, not a failure of the grid.

This week’s storm comes almost exactly two years after a February 2021 winter storm crippled the state’s power system, killing more than 240 people and leaving millions without heat.

“The power grid has maintained ample power supply for the entire state the entire time,” Gov. Greg Abbott said on Twitter.