Thousands of frustrated Texans shivered in homes without power for a second day Thursday, most of them around booming Austin, and fading hopes of a quick fix stirred grim memories of a deadly 2021 blackout after an icy winter storm across the southern U.S. The freeze has been blamed for at least 10 traffic deaths on slick roads this week in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma. And even as Texas finally began thawing Thursday, a new Artic front from Canada was headed toward the northern U.S. and threatening New England with potentially the coldest weather in decades. Wind chills could dive below minus 50 (minus 45 Celsius). In Austin, city officials compared the damage from fallen trees and iced-over power lines to tornadoes as they came under mounting criticism for slow repairs and shifting timelines to restore power. “We had hoped to make more progress today,“ said Jackie Sargent, general manager of Austin Energy. ”And that simply has not happened." Across Texas more than 280,000 customers were without power Thursday night, down from 430,000 earlier in the day, according to PowerOutage.us. The failures were most widespread in Austin, where impatience was rising among 150,000 customers nearly two days after the electricity first went out, which for many also means no heat. Power failures have affected about 30% of customers in the city of nearly a million at any given time since Wednesday. By Thursday night, Austin officials backtracked on early estimates that power would be fully restored by Friday evening, saying the extent of the damage was worse than originally calculated and that they could no longer predict when all the lights may come back on. Allison Rizzolo, who lost power in Austin, told KEYE-TV that she wished there were more clarity from the city on what to do or expect. “I get that there’s a fine line between preparedness and panic, but I wish they’d been more aggressive in their communications,” Rizzolo said. For many Texans, it was the second time in three years that a February freeze — temperatures were in the 30s Thursday with wind chills below freezing — caused prolonged outages and uncertainty over when the lights would come back on. Unlike the 2021 blackouts in Texas, when hundreds of people died after the state’s grid was pushed to the brink of total failure because of a lack of generation, the outages in Austin this time were largely the result of frozen equipment and ice-burdened trees and limbs falling on power lines. But the differences were little comfort to Austin residents and businesses that also lost power for days two years ago. Read more: Flights canceled, at least 2 dead as ice storm freezes US Among those still without power Thursday was the Central Texas Food Bank, according to Travis County Judge Andy Brown, the county's top elected official. “They have 21 counties to serve. They've been down for at least three days now. There's a lot of need that they have,” Brown said. School systems in the Dallas and Austin area, plus many in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee, closed Thursday as snow, sleet and freezing rain continued to push through. In Austin, schools will not open until next week at the earliest. Hundreds more flights were canceled again in Texas, although not as many as in previous days. Airport crews battled ice to keep runways open. By Thursday morning, airlines had canceled more than 500 flights at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport — more than a quarter of all flights scheduled for the day. Still, that was down from about 1,300 cancellations on Wednesday and more than 1,000 on Tuesday, according to FlightAware.com. Dozens more flights were canceled at Dallas Love Field and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. Another wave of frigid weather in the U.S. is on the horizon, with an Arctic cold front expected to move from Canada into the northern Plains and Upper Midwest and sweep into the Northeast by Friday. In a briefing Thursday with the federal Weather Prediction Center, New Englanders were warned that wind chills — the combined effect of wind and cold air on exposed skin — in the minus 50s “could be the coldest felt in decades.” The strong winds and cold air will create wind chills “rarely seen in northern and eastern Maine,” according to an advisory from the National Weather Service office in Caribou, Maine. Jay Broccolo, director of weather operations at an observatory on New Hampshire’s Mount Washington — which for decades held the world record for the fastest wind gust — said Thursday that wind speeds could top 100 mph (160 kph). “We take safety really seriously in the higher summits," Broccolo said, “and this weekend’s forecast is looking pretty gnarly, even for our standards.”

8A major winter storm with millions of Americans in its path brought a mix of rain, freezing rain and snow to the central U.S. on Wednesday as airlines canceled thousands of flights, officials urged residents to stay off roads and schools closed campuses. The blast of frigid weather, which began arriving Tuesday night, put a long stretch of states from New Mexico and Colorado to Maine under winter storm warnings and watches. On Wednesday morning, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan saw freezing rain, sleet and snow. By midday Wednesday, some places had already reported snow totals exceeding or nearing a foot, including the central Illinois town of Lewistown with 14.4 inches (36.6 centimeters) and the northeastern Missouri city of Hannibal with 11.5 inches (29.2 centimeters). “And it’s still snowing across these areas,” said Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland. Central Illinois and northern Indiana appeared likely to receive the most snowfall, with expected totals ranging from 12 to 18 inches (30 to 45 centimeters) by the end of Thursday, Orrison said. Snow had begun to taper off in Missouri by early afternoon but much of the state could wind up with 8 inches to a foot (20 to 30 centimeters) of snow. Parts of Michigan also could snow totals around a foot by Thursday. In Chicago, Elisha Waldman and his sons welcomed the opportunity to hit a sledding hill Wednesday morning, even as snow continued to fall. Read:Blizzard buffets East Coast with deep snow, winds, flooding “Cold and wet and wonderful, and getting cold and wet is part of the fun with the guys, and we get to go inside and have hot cocoa and warm up,” Waldman said. In Detroit’s western suburbs, Tony Haley also found an advantage to the weather. He owns a landscaping and irrigation company that offers snow removal and salting services, but the early winter weeks offered few opportunities for business. “This one here, we’re looking for a good two, three days of work,” Haley said after clearing snow away from several businesses in Canton. But for those on the roads, the heavy snow created hazardous conditions. “We’re receiving a lot of snow over here in northwest Indiana and it’s the wet, slushy snow that causes treacherous driving conditions to say the least,” Indiana State Police Sgt. Glen Fifield told WFLD-TV. In central Missouri, officials shut down part of Interstate 70 midday after a crash made the roadway impassable. Areas south of the heavy snow were expected to see freezing rain, with the heaviest ice predicted along the lower Ohio Valley area from Louisville, Kentucky, to Memphis, Tennessee. “If everything holds to where it is right now, this is the real deal,” said Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who ordered state government offices to close on Thursday. “It is dangerous. People need to be prepared.” The disruptive storm moved across the central U.S. on Groundhog Day, the same day the famed groundhog Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter. The storm came on the heels of a nor’easter last weekend that brought blizzard conditions to many parts of the East Coast. The storm’s path extended as far south as Texas, nearly a year after a catastrophic freeze buckled the state’s power grid in one of the worst blackouts in U.S. history. The forecast did not call for the same prolonged and frigid temperatures as the February 2021 storm, and the National Weather Service said the system would, generally, not be as bad this time for Texas. No large-scale power outages were reported by early afternoon Wednesday in Texas or elsewhere, according to poweroutage.us. Read: Snow storms and pandemic ground flights, delay holiday's end Snowfall totals reached 22 inches (56 centimeters) in Colorado Springs and up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) in the Denver area, with more expected, prompting universities, state government offices and the Legislature to shut down. Airlines canceled nearly 8,000 flights in the U.S. scheduled for Wednesday or Thursday, the flight-tracking service FlightAware.com showed. Airports in St. Louis, Chicago, Kansas City and Detroit canceled more flights than usual. Almost 700 flights were canceled Thursday alone at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, and more than 300 were canceled at nearby Dallas Love Field. In an effort to stay ahead of the weather, Southwest Airlines announced Tuesday that it would suspend all of its flight operations Wednesday at St. Louis Lambert International Airport and Thursday at its Dallas Love Field hub. National Weather Service forecasters in Little Rock put their own spin on the Groundhog Day tradition with a photo of their office cat, Tarmac, and the caption: “SHADOWS EVERYWHERE! THE WINTER STORM IS HAPPENING!”

At least two people have died in the U.K. after the year's first winter storm battered parts of the countries with gusts of nearly 100 mph (160 kph). The storm, which was named Arwen by the country's Met Office, hit parts of the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland particularly hard, causing road causing road closures, train delays, power cuts and high waves. Cumbria Police, in northwest England said a man died after a tree fell on him just before 11 p.m. on Friday. In Northern Ireland, a man was killed when his car was hit by a falling tree. Also read: Italian Coast Guard rescues 550 migrants from stormy seas Though the worst of the storm appears to have passed, people have been advised to be wary of traveling on Saturday, as train networks reported disruption to services amid still-high winds and heavy snow. “Storm Arwen has delivered some dangerously strong winds overnight, with gusts in excess of 90 mph recorded," the Met Office's chief meteorologist Steve Ramsdale said. “The strong winds will move south across the U.K. through the day, gradually weakening.” Also read:Record-breaking storm douses drought-stricken California

A winter storm that left millions without power in record-breaking cold weather claimed more lives Tuesday, including three people found dead after a tornado hit a seaside town in North Carolina and four family members who perished in a Houston-area house fire while using a fireplace to stay warm.

A major winter storm threatened to blanket parts of the middle of the country with more than a foot of snow Monday, promising to disrupt travel and forcing the closure of some coronavirus testing sites.

The Federal Aviation Administration halted all flights in and out of Chicago's O'Hare Airport for hours Friday night due to a sprawling winter storm, which forced the closure of schools, universities and government offices as it moved across large sections of the Midwest.

The Federal Aviation Administration halted all flights in and out of Chicago's O'Hare Airport Friday night due to a sprawling winter storm hitting large sections of the Midwest that led to the closure of schools, universities and government offices.