Texas Storm Leaves Thousands of Homes Without Power: Weather Watch

More than half a million electricity consumers are still without power in Texas and over one thousand flights were canceled after powerful storms charged along the Rio Grande late Tuesday.

Across parts of Texas, and mostly in the east, 500,789 customers reportedly had outages at 4:45 am EDT, according to PowerOutage.us. On Tuesday, 1,161 flights into and around the US were canceled with the majority of those in Dallas and Houston, according to FlightAware. Wednesday shows 198 canceled, with 136 of those from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

There is a marginal risk of severe thunderstorms throughout the Great Plains from North Dakota and Montana south to Texas, the US Storm Prediction Center said. A more serious threat covers an area on the western side of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and eastern Colorado. There is a chance of thunderstorms over a wider area including New York City and southern Florida.

In other weather news:

India: Tuesday’s highest temperature was 50.5C (123F) in Churu (west Rajasthan), according to the India Meteorological Department. The annual monsoon is about halfway across the Bay of Bengal and looks like it will reach southern India on June 1, the department said. It has already reached about two-thirds of Sri Lanka.

Australia: Damaging winds may sweep across parts of south Western Australia, including Perth, later Wednesday, said Sarah Scully, a meteorologist with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Winds may reach 90 kilometers (56 miles) per hour, which is enough to bring down tree limbs and cause power outages. Damaging winds may develop across the southeast Thursday and this could be accompanied by heavy rain and flash flooding in Victoria. A low pressure system is building in the ocean south of the country.

Tropic: Typhoon Ewiniar is continuing its northeastern track parallel to Japan’s coastline. The storm’s top winds are holding at 75 miles per hour, which makes it a Category 1 on the US five-step, Saffir-Simpson scale.

Sun: The US Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is asking for public comment on anyone who experienced or observed disruptions during the severe geomagnetic storm earlier this month, the US Space Weather Prediction Center said in a notice on its website. The request for comment comes just as the sunspot cluster that caused that storm is about to come back around and take its place on the Sun’s visible disc.