Texas has been hit with severe weather and storms for the past several days, resulting in major power outages across several parts of the state. The power outages have gone through Memorial Day weekend and into this week, with no definitive end in sight. The current storm focusing in on the state brings forth strong winds and large hail but before they were hit by devasting tornadoes. The twisters that tore through cities over this past holiday weekend killed at least 24 people. The current power outage causing winds and hail have killed one person so far, but with the continued electric issues, more deaths could possibly follow.

The power outages pose a serious threat to people’s health as an intense heat wave comes in.

Several cities and counties have declared a state of emergency as the weather issues continue. In addition to the declaration, some places, such as Dallas County, had to make other adjustments. This past Tuesday was the state’s runoff election day and the power outages affected many of the polling places. Dallas County had to keep the locations open for two hours longer than they typically do in order to accommodate people due to delays caused by the outages.

Flights have even been affected by the storms. An American Airlines flight saw the plane pushed out of a gate by the forces of the wind. Plane parking in general at the airport was difficult as they struggled to work against wind gusts of 80 miles per hour. Many are amazed that no injuries came out of these incidents. Memorial Day travel plans as a whole were massively disrupted as a whole as the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport alone saw over 500 flights cancelled or significantly delayed due to the weather.

Roads were congested all around Texas as people tried to flee their cities and the state to get to power.

In one of Texas’ largest cities, Houston, at least 300,000 people went without power. When they tried to leave the city, the roadways were jam packed with major back-up due to everyone else having the same idea at the same time. School districts called for people to shelter in place as the storms continued into the school week. This forced buses to return back to the campuses after they left in the afternoon to drop off students, as it was the quickest option to get all back to safety as soon as possible.