HOUSTON – Hundreds of thousands remain without power in Texas after last week’s devastating derecho as the heat and humidity intensify across the region.
The death toll from the storms has increased to at least eight. Restoration work quickly began to bring power back to the more than one million affected customers. As of Tuesday morning, more than 145,000 customers remained in the dark around Houston, according to PowerOutage.us.
According to Harris County Executive Judge Lina Hidalgo, it could be weeks before some people’s power is restored, as 10 energy transmission lines are down.
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“A heat alert is out for South Texas. This is where we do have power, which is great. We can work with air conditioning,” FOX Weather Meteorologist Britta Merwin said. “The problem down here is that it’s early onset, which is also a similar problem for Houston, where we are struggling with power.”
The triple-digit feels-like temperatures now pose a growing risk for those without air conditioning. This comes after one of last week’s storm victims died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Some people have been using generators to stay cool and run their AC.
CenterPoint Energy spokeswoman Alyssia Oshodi told FOX Weather that crews are working around the clock to restore power to their customers, which peaked at more than 922,000 after the storms passed.
“We saw significant damage from these storms. What is taking a significant amount of time is the amount of vegetation,” Oshodi said. “A lot of the harder-hit areas of our service territory we are coming across where not just tree limbs but entire trees have come down on top of our lines, taking down poles.”
Oshodi thinks crews will be “substantially complete” by Wednesday evening.
HOUSTON METRO ROCKED BY 100 MPH DERECHO THAT LEFT 8 DEAD AND OVER 1 MILLION WITHOUT POWER
The Houston area is forecast to see temperatures in the 90s, with heat indices around 100 degrees. Even though it’ll be hot, Houston will at least miss out on the worst heat, which will impact much of West and South Texas.
Days of triple-digit heat are in store across the Rio Grande Valley, with some locations potentially topping 110 degrees. This should break a few daily records for high temperatures in cities like Laredo, McAllen and Del Rio.
To make matters worse, moisture looks to be present, allowing temperatures to feel worse than they actually are. Closer to the Mexico border, areas should easily surpass a heat index of 110 and possibly close to 115-117 by midweek.
This has allowed for an “extreme” heat risk to be issued for this region starting Wednesday and going through the weekend. This also means there will likely be little to no overnight relief from the heat, and it will last for a longer duration than what is normally seen.
The worst heat will escape San Antonio, Austin, Corpus Christi and other big Texas cities, but even there, it will feel like summer.