A bitter cold gripped North Texas on Friday as a massive winter storm pummeled much of the country, knocking out power to millions, snarling holiday travel and dumping snow and ice on many regions.
About 200 million people — more than 60% of the nation’s population — were under some form of winter weather advisory or warning Friday, according to the National Weather Service, which said the storm “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever.”
“This was an extremely powerful storm,” said Bianca Garcia, a meteorologist with the weather service in Fort Worth. “We saw a strong upper-level system that was able to plunge this cold air all the way south.”
Temperatures dipped to 11 degrees early Friday morning at DFW International Airport — with a wind chill of negative 9 — then hovered in the teens much of the day before eventually reaching 25 degrees. Friday’s low made it the third-coldest Dec. 23 on record for Dallas-Fort Worth, with the coldest in 1989 at negative 1, according to the weather service.
Blustery winds knocked out power to roughly 10,000 homes and businesses in Dallas-Fort Worth, but by Friday evening power had been restored to all but about 4,000. The bulk of the outages were concentrated in Tarrant and Ellis counties, where crews worked to repair downed and damaged power lines.
Ray Whitworth, who lives in southwest Arlington, lost power for roughly 12 hours Friday. He and his wife, Chris, bundled up in three layers and draped themselves, their two cats and three dogs in blankets. With a dwindling supply of gas logs, they sporadically turned on their fireplace to warm up.
By the time power was restored, the temperature in their home was 45 degrees.
“It was hellish,” Whitworth, 67, said. “There’s really no excuse. We knew this was coming.”
Yet much of Texas breathed a sigh of relief that the state’s power grid withstood soaring demand, unlike the devastating 2021 winter storm in which millions were left without heat and water for days and more than 240 people died.
Forecasts called for this storm to be both shorter and less extreme than in 2021, with little precipitation in North Texas.
In Dallas, nearly 500 people sought refuge at emergency shelters across the city, and a new 1,000-bed shelter will open Saturday at Fair Park to consolidate operations. A handful of overnight shelters in Fort Worth reached capacity, as cities across the region raced to open recreation centers and other warming stations.
MedStar, which services 15 Tarrant County cities, said it responded to 37 freeze-related emergencies, and at least one weather-related death was reported. A man was found unresponsive about noon Thursday behind a fast-food restaurant on East Lancaster Avenue in Fort Worth; he died at a hospital, according to KDFW-TV (Channel 4).
Dallas Fire-Rescue responded to 17 environmental emergencies and 22 calls of “cut off water” — usually meaning burst pipes — from Thursday morning to Friday morning, spokesman Jason Evans said.
At a news conference Friday morning, Dallas officials said the city received 124 complaints about pets kept outside in freezing temperatures Thursday, and that workers seized three animals and delivered 19 violation notices to pet owners. Officials said cold-weather emergencies in the city have not been as frequent as in recent years and a little more than a dozen traffic signals were not working properly or without power.
For people trying to travel to or from Texas, the winter freeze complicated plans and left thousands stranded at airports or unable to drive due to treacherous road conditions.
Nearly 15,000 flights nationwide had been delayed or canceled by Friday evening, with massive disruptions in Chicago, Denver, New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
Dallas-based Southwest Airlines canceled or delayed more than 3,100 flights by Friday evening, FlightAware reported. Fort Worth-based American Airlines called off or postponed more than 1,600 of its planned flights. More than 900 flights into and out of DFW Airport were canceled or delayed, as were about 325 to or from Dallas Love Field.
This weekend will bring some relief to North Texas. Saturday’s high will climb to the low 30s, and on Christmas the forecast calls for a high of 45 degrees.
Temperatures will continue to rise, with the forecast calling for a high in the 60s by the middle of next week.
“We’ll have a warming trend,” said Garcia, with the weather service. “It’s going to feel very different in a few days.”
Arctic outbreak delivers bone-chilling temperatures to North Texas ahead of Christmas
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