A deadly winter storm punching the south and middle of the country left millions without power in Texas on Tuesday and spawned a possible tornado that killed three in North Carolina.
Tearing houses off their foundations and breaking trees in half, the suspect tornado hit Brunswick County, North Carolina, around midnight and left at least three dead and 10 injured, the Brunswick Emergency Service said on Tuesday. .
Brunswick County emergency management officials also said there were reports of people trapped in homes or afraid to disappear during the start of rescue operations.
“It is something I have never seen before. A lot of destruction,” Brunswick County Sheriff John Ingram said at a news conference on Tuesday. “It is going to be a long recovery process.”
Power lines have also been cut, Brunswick Electric Membership Corporation said, leaving thousands of people without electricity.
A tornado warning separate from Miami National Weather Service it was also in effect in parts of Florida until 7 am, after a strong storm capable of producing a tornado was located over the Miccosukee Indian reservation.
At least 25 people have died in weather-related fatalities so far since the weekend, mostly in Texas, while a historic winter storm continues to cover large areas of the country.
In Texas, two people, including a child, died of carbon monoxide poisoning after a car was used to generate energy for heating, Houston Police said.
More than 3.9 million people are waking up without power in Texas, according to poweroutage.us., As low temperatures bring a demand for energy that the state’s power grid is unable to meet.
The areas most affected by power outages were around Galveston and Houston, according to poweroutage.us
The storm that threw snow and ice from Arkansas to Indiana – and brought record low temperatures from Oklahoma City to Iron Range in Minnesota, where thermometers have dropped to minus 38 – it is expected to move northeast on Tuesday, the National Weather Service said. Snow, freezing rain and ice are expected from the Ohio Valley to Pennsylvania and Maine, the meteorologist added.
Texas officials begged residents to stay off the road, conserve energy and seal windows and windy doors.
Among the crises the county had already faced was a power outage – and subsequent failure of a backup generator – in its public health department, where more than 8,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine were being kept in cold storage, said Hidalgo .
Thousands of doses were promptly sent to Harris County Jail, Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital, Rice University and elsewhere, she said.
School images showed dozens of students trembling waiting for their photos.
“I literally dropped everything, put everything in and ran here, and apparently everyone had the same thoughts as me,” said a student to NBC affiliate KPRC.
Elsewhere in Texas, San Antonio International Airport has canceled all flights scheduled for Tuesday, and the Dallas Stars delayed a National Hockey League game against the Nashville Predators in an effort to save energy.
The Houston Chronicle, for its part, was forced to stop producing its print edition after its plant lost power at 2 am. In a note to subscribers, the newspaper said it had not even happened when the city was hit by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
Abilene, a city of about 170,000, has shut down its water services as a result of power cuts at all three water treatment plants. tweeted.
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In an attempt to save energy, employees in Dallas said his skylines would get dark, and Kansas City did the same.
Kansas City, Missouri, as well as cities across the United States, including Tennessee and Iowa, were threatened by power cuts on Monday. Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities in 17 states, called for continuous interruptions because the backup power supply had run out.
The Pacific Northwest was hit by a weekend storm and was dealing with persistent problems, with hundreds of thousands of people in Oregon still in the dark on Monday after heavy snow and ice knocked down tree branches this weekend and blocked storm drains in Washington and Idaho, raising concerns about flooding.
Nearly 5,000 power lines were knocked down by ice and tree branches, and several transmission lines were severely damaged by the storm that passed.
The National Weather Service said the next storm was expected to move from the Rocky Mountains to the Southern Plains on Tuesday, bringing freezing rain to eastern Texas and Louisiana and up to 20 inches of snow to parts of Oklahoma, Arkansas and southern Missouri. .
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
