10K-Plus Austin Energy Customers Without Power Amid Winter Blast

AUSTIN, TX — More than 7,000 Austin Energy customers were without power Thursday afternoon amid a winter surge that ushered in freezing rain and near-freezing temperatures.

At its peak, the outage affected some 10,000 utility users before power was restored to affected neighborhoods. By 1:20 p.m., the number of affected households had dwindled to 7,300, and some 40 minutes later down to some 6,000 as utility officials reported in updates on Twitter.

A wide swath of Central Texas — including Travis and Williamson counties — is under a "winter weather advisory" until midnight alerting to frigid temperatures and precipitation resulting in icy roadways, making travel treacherous.

See power outage map here

Those in Austin may need to bundle up tonight, with temperatures expected to dip to 28 degrees. Saturday is expected to be even colder, with a low of 16 degrees predicted.

"With icy conditions blanketing our area today, please be prepared for possible outages due to the weather," Austin Energy officials wrote on Twitter. To that end, three key measures were suggested:

• Register for text outage alerts: http://austinenergy.com/go/alerts.
• Bookmark the utility's Storm Center Outage Map: http://bit.ly/ATXoutage.
• Keep your cell phone charged.

Austin Energy listed three ways to report outages:

• Text the word outage to 287846.
• Visit outagemap.austinenergy.com, and then click "Report Outage."
• Call (512) 322-9100.