Meanwhile, more than 370,000 utilities across Texas were without power as of early Thursday morning, according to the outage tracking website. PowerOutage.us.
“Ice and tree limbs are still breaking as our linemen work to recover,” utility Austin Energy tweeted Wednesday. According to PowerOutage.us, the company had more than 154,700 customers without power as of early Thursday.
The utility company said some areas could be without power until Friday, noting recovery efforts were also hampered by accumulating ice and freezing temperatures.
As the storm neared its end, US flight cancellations also appeared to be easing after hundreds of flights were canceled this week due to bad weather.
As of Thursday morning, just under 670 flights in, to and from the US have been canceled, according to the online flight tracker FlightAware. At least 257 of those cancellations involved Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, while 48 were at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Dallas Love Field had just under 30 cancellations, according to FlightAware.
As the severe storm system moves out of the southeast, steady rain was likely to fall from the Lower Mississippi Valley to the southeast on Thursday, raising the possibility of isolated flooding, the National Weather Service said.
“The next boost of arctic air entering the country from Canada is expected to affect the northern plains and the upper midwest,” it said Thursday. Chills could get “dangerously cold,” it warned, and areas of fresh snow could also experience brief whiteout conditions due to wind gusts accompanying the Arctic front.
Frigid temperatures are expected to “flood the northeast and northern Mid-Atlantic” by Friday, it said. The core of the cold is expected to move across the Northeast and northern New England in particular, leaving parts of the region with what may have felt the coldest weather in decades.