there are 3.4 million Americans without electricity

“Poverty does not give people a truce in the region,” said Bob Oravec, chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service, referring to Texas.

The system is expected to move to the northeast of the country on Thursday. More than 100 million people live in areas where some sort of winter weather alert is in effect, according to the weather service.

At least 30 people have died this week due to extreme weather conditions, some trying to warm up indoors. In the greater Houston area, a family has died of carbon monoxide from vehicle exhaust in their garage. Others perished using a fireplace for warmth.

Historic minimum temperatures have been recorded in various cities. Scientists say the polar vortex, a climate pattern that usually persists in the Arctic, extends to lower latitudes and longer, and that man-made global warming is partly to blame.

Electric utilities from Minnesota to Texas to Mississippi are performing phased blackouts to reduce the load on distribution systems to meet extreme heat and power demand. In Mexico, phased power outages covered more than a third of the country on Tuesday as storms disrupted Texas natural gas imports.

The worst blackouts in the United States were in Texas, where 3 million homes and businesses went without power as of noon Wednesday. The company that manages the state’s power lines, Ercot, said service had been restored to 600,000 homes and businesses.

Meanwhile, the US Southeast is bracing for another major winter storm. “Temperatures will remain 1 to -6 degrees below normal in the Central Plains, the Mississippi Valley and the lower Great Lakes,” the National Meteorological Service (NWS) said.

It was also noted that more than 20 winter storm-related deaths have already been reported since the cold weather worsened last week, many of which are due to traffic accidents in Texas, Kentucky and Missouri.

The winter storm also triggered at least four tornadoes, according to Weather.com, including one off the coast of North Carolina on Monday night, which killed at least three people and injured ten others.

White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said the cold was also affecting the delivery and distribution of coronavirus vaccines. In Texas, for example, vaccination sites are closed.