Severe Memorial Day storms paralyze eastern Texas
Early Tuesday morning, nearly 200,000 electricity customers in Texas were left without power after a wave of violent storms swept through the region during Memorial Day. According to PowerOutage.us, the extensive blackouts followed a series of intense weather warnings from the National Weather Service (NWS), many of which remained active into the morning hours.
The worst-hit areas include Trinity County, where 33.2% of all customers experienced outages—over 3,700 homes and businesses in the dark. Houston County reported just over 3,300 customers without service, translating to 21% of tracked customers. Nearby Newton County also saw a similar 20% outage rate.
Montgomery County faced one of the largest absolute losses with more than 38,000 outages among the over 377,000 customers tracked there. In Houston County, the number of reported outages stood at 3,048, approximately 19.3% of the area’s power users.
CenterPoint Energy, a major utility provider in the region, reported 120,378 outages at 3:43 a.m. local time—the highest single-provider figure during the event.
Lingering storm risk and further disruption expected
The NWS Houston office had issued flood watches, flash flood warnings, and alerts for severe thunderstorms across more than 30 counties, including Austin, Houston, and Trinity, through the early morning hours. Winds with localized gusts up to 58 mph were forecast, capable of causing significant wind damage.
Meanwhile, Oncor, Texas’s largest energy provider, confirmed that its crews had been working overnight to restore service after the Memorial Day weekend storms disrupted vast parts of the electrical infrastructure.
Forecast for Tuesday and beyond
The day began with early morning thunderstorm activity, and temperatures are expected to climb toward 90°F (32°C) by afternoon, according to Fox 26 Houston. The unsettled pattern is set to persist into Wednesday, with showers and storms returning and daytime highs ranging in the mid to upper 80s°F (29–31°C).
As of this update, 197,764 customers remain without power across eastern Texas, underscoring the scale of the disruption and the challenges faced by local utilities in responding to the aftermath of extreme holiday weekend weather.
