In central Texas, where many roads have already been impassible for days, another barrage of sleet and snow was expected late into Wednesday evening.
Halfway through the week that Texas froze over, everything seemed to be in a state of frigid chaos. Some homes had no water at all while others watched it gush from burst pipes into their hallways and living rooms. In Galveston, where dozens had huddled on Monday and Tuesday in a county-run warming center, the newest pressing need was refrigerated trucks — to hold the bodies expected to be found in the days ahead. And on Wednesday more than 2.5 million people were still without power, while nearly twice as many were being told to boil their water. The onslaught of winter was far from finished. In central Texas, where many roads have already been impassible for days, another barrage of sleet and snow was expected late into Wednesday evening. The new storm was forecast to march toward the Mid-Atlantic, hitting parts of North Carolina and Virginia that are already laboring under the ice from the last storm. In Houston, Catherine Saenz and her family, like most of their neighbors, have had no power or water for days, as the city remains in the grip of the fiercest winter in memory. But they are fortunate: They have a fireplace. Even fireplaces have to be fed, though, and to keep the two parents, two daughters and two grandmothers from freezing, her husband has spent hours in the afternoon scouring the neighborhood for fallen trees and rotten wood. “I never imagined that we would be in this situation,” said Ms. Saenz, who grew up in Colombia but has lived in Houston through Hurricanes Ike and Harvey. “No one is prepared, it is dangerous and we are very vulnerable.” As the storm moved east, Duke Energy warned its customers in the Carolinas that there could be a million power outages in the days ahead. Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, gave a similar warning, telling residents to keep their phones charged and to prepare themselves for the coming snow and ice. Already, at least 31 people have died nationwide since the punishing winter weather began last week. Some died in crashes on icy roads, some succumbed to the cold and others were killed when desperate attempts at finding some warmth turned deadly. Across the country, homes were still without power — more than 150,000 outages in Oregon,111,000 in Louisiana and 88,000 in Kentucky as of Wednesday afternoon — but nowhere was it as bad as it is in Texas. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state’s power grid, said on Wednesday that about 700,000 homes had electricity restored overnight but that more than 2.6 million customers were still without power. The Houston mayor’s office posted on Twitter on Wednesday that the power outages there would “likely last another few days.” During a news conference on Wednesday, Gov.
