Record-setting cold weather has paralyzed much of America, bringing freezing temperatures and snow to parts of the country that haven't seen such weather in decades — if ever in modern history.
More than 3 million Americans were without power Monday. The vast majority of those power outages — more than 2.6 million — were in Texas, CNN reports, where freezing temperatures and high demand for heat set off rolling outages. Austin, "the city with palm trees and typically mild weather," was covered with six inches of snow, "an amount not seen since 1966," The New York Times reports.
Texas' power outages can be attributed to "an electricity grid that is independent from surrounding states, low natural gas supplies, along with sky-high prices and reduced output from the state's numerous wind turbines," The Washington Post explains.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
In some parts of the country, temperatures were 50 degrees below average, making the central United States "the most unusually cold region on the planet," the Post reports. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, was bracing for temperatures of -10 Fahrenheit, which would make Monday night the coldest night ever observed. Wind chills hit -40 and -50 in parts of Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado. "There is the potential for more than 240 cold temperature records to be broken by Tuesday evening," CNN reports.
This is just the first of two major winter storms expected this week. The second is forecast to hit on Wednesday.
-
Israel: Losing the American publicFeature A recent poll finds American support for Israel's military action in Gaza has fallen from 50% to 32%
-
Unmaking AmericansFeature Trump is threatening to revoke the citizenship of foreign-born Americans. Could he do that?
-
EPA: A bonfire of climate change regulationsFeature The Environmental Protection Agency wants to roll back its 'endangerment finding,' a ruling that lets the agency regulate carbon emissions
-
Nobody seems surprised Wagner's Prigozhin died under suspicious circumstancesSpeed Read
-
Western mountain climbers allegedly left Pakistani porter to die on K2Speed Read
-
'Circular saw blades' divide controversial Rio Grande buoys installed by Texas governorSpeed Read
-
Los Angeles city workers stage 1-day walkout over labor conditionsSpeed Read
-
Mega Millions jackpot climbs to an estimated $1.55 billionSpeed Read
-
Bangladesh dealing with worst dengue fever outbreak on recordSpeed Read
-
Glacial outburst flooding in Juneau destroys homesSpeed Read
-
Scotland seeking 'monster hunters' to search for fabled Loch Ness creatureSpeed Read
