Nearly 30,000 without power Thursday as winter storm moves into North Texas
Nearly 30,000 North Texans were without power early Thursday as a storm that has the region under a winter weather warning moved into the area, according to the Oncor website.
By around 5 a.m. Thursday, the number of active outages were reported to be just over 500 in the region, mostly around North Dallas and Plano, but over 30,000 customers remained affected by the storm.
“A majority of those outages – about 24,000 – are in the Dallas metro area and adjacent north and northeast counties. The storm has also greatly impacted the northern and western regions of our service area, with approximately 5,000 outages near the Red River and 1,000 in the Permian Basin,” Oncor said in an emailed statement Thursday morning. “While outage totals in other regions of the Oncor service area are not as high, local crews are still actively responding as they occur.”
Late Wednesday night, Oncor’s map of power loss showed more than 1,000 people without power in north Dallas, with no specific reason for the outage listed. Nearly 1,000 were without power in and around Waxahachie.
More than 1,100 people were expected to have power restored by 1:30 a.m. Thursday due to an outage in Garland, the reason for which Oncor did not provide.
A power outage in Hebron that had more more than 600 people without electricity was expected to be fixed by 1 a.m. Thursday, according to the Oncor website. The outage was due to equipment failure in the area, according to the website.
An outage in Sachse that had more than 800 people without power was fixed sometime around 11 p.m.
Smaller outages in Fort Worth, Arlington and the rest of the region had up to a couple hundred customers without electricity, per outage.
The website for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s electrical grid, showed Thursday morning that there was enough power available to meet current demands across Texas.
The National Weather Service said Tuesday a large factor in power outages would be how quickly temperatures dropped, with a faster drop being better because it would mean less ice buildup on power lines. The more likely of two scenarios, according to the service, showed temperatures dropping too slowly to prevent that kind of ice buildup.
This story was originally published February 2, 2022 at 10:22 PM.