Texas ice storm causes statewide blackout : NPR

An ice storm finally passed through Austin, Texas, on Thursday morning, leaving thousands of residents without power.

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Montinique Monroe / Getty

An ice storm finally passed through Austin, Texas, on Thursday morning, leaving thousands of residents without power.

Montinique Monroe / Getty

A severe winter storm finally passed through Texas on Thursday, but residents will feel the storm’s effects for much longer. The storm resulted in power outages in hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.

Weather in the state is part of big ice storm attacked the southern United States since Tuesday, stretching from Texas to Tennessee. Across the state, arctic weather has closed classes, canceled or delayed thousands of flights and caused numerous car crashes, including a fatal crash in Austin.

Austin Energy tells customers they cannot determine when power will return

More than 280,000 homes across the state lost power since Thursday dark. Temperatures are as low as 29 degrees in South Central Texas and as low as 27 degrees in parts of Austin and San Antonio.

The blackout was further complicated by a lack of information from city officials. On Thursday, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson announced his office would be more communicative going forward. He said that a press conference addressing the storm and the blackout, “should have happened before.”

“I’m disappointed, and I know others are disappointed too,” Watson said at a press conference. “This needs to happen more often. Now we should focus on life and safety issues — get those problems out of the way — and then we’ll come up with a way to do this.” new to do this so we can respond to public inquiries more quickly.”

During the first few days of the storm, Texas Court reported that some residents, without an internet connection or reliable cell phone data, struggled to get information from electric utility provider Austin Energy’s website and social media.

On Thursday, Austin Energy, one of the largest suppliers in the country, issued a bleak update: It is unknown when all of its customers will get power back.

“We have determined that we are unable to provide specific system-wide recovery estimates,” the utility tweeted. “Each individual outage presents its own challenges, and full recovery will take longer than originally expected. At this time, we are unable to provide recovery times.”

In San Antonio, 13 outages are affecting fewer than 25 customers as of Thursday night, according to Energy CPSserve the area.

Governor Abbott says the state has “abundant” power

In Central Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, more than 100,000 customers were without power, according to oncorserve the area.

And while hundreds of thousands of Texans are struggling without electricity, Governor Greg Abbott tells residents the state has enough power.

“The Texas Grid has maintained ample supply throughout the winter weather this whole week,” he tweeted. “Any power outages are caused by local problems such as fallen trees and downed power lines.”