More than 2.5 million homes and businesses throughout Texas are currently without power after a historic winter storm dropped several inches of snow on the state.
According to PowerOutage.us, about 2.6 million customers in Texas are currently without power in nearly every part of the state.
Scripps station KXXV in Waco, Texas reports that the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has declared a level 3 alert — the council’s highest possible emergency level — and has instructed utility companies across the state to rotate power outages to conserve energy.
ERCOT is also asking Texans to conserve energy in the hopes of limiting rotating blackouts and says that demand for energy could increase in the coming days. Utility customers in the state are being encouraged to turn off appliances, lights, and other equipment to prevent power surges.
While northern Texas is no stranger to snowfall, the southern part of the state doesn’t often get accumulation. But as of Monday morning, Houston saw as much as four inches of snowfall, two to three inches were expected in El Paso and even the beach town of Galveston was blanketed in an inch of snow.
In the northern part of the state, the Weather Channel reported that the Dallas airport received about five inches of snow. The Dallas Morning News reports that areas northwest of the city could see as much as 10 inches of accumulation.
As of Monday morning, more than 150 million Americans were under winter weather advisories, some of which extend well into Tuesday. The storm is expected to cut across the southern plains and the Ohio Valley before making its way to the northeast towards New England.