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Widespread power outages from deadly Houston storm raise new risk: hot weather
A video photojournalist shoots footage of damage at a tire shop at the intersection of Sowden and Bingle in the aftermath of a severe storm on Friday, in Houston.
Brett Coomer/AP
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Brett Coomer/AP
A video photojournalist shoots footage of damage at a tire shop at the intersection of Sowden and Bingle in the aftermath of a severe storm on Friday, in Houston.
Brett Coomer/AP
HOUSTON — As the Houston area works to clean up and restore power to hundreds of thousands after deadly storms left at least seven people dead, it will do so amid a smog warning and scorching temperatures that could pose health risks.
National Weather Service meteorologist Marc Chenard said on Saturday that highs of around 90 degrees (32.2 C) were expected through the start of the coming week, with heat indexes likely approaching 100 degrees (38 C) by midweek.
“We expect the impact of the heat to gradually increase … we will start to see that heat risk increase Tuesday into Wednesday through Friday,” Chenard said.
The heat index is what the temperature feels like to the human body when humidity is combined with the air temperature, according to the weather service.
“Don’t overdo yourself during the cleanup process,” the weather service’s Houston office said in a post on the social platform X.
In addition to the heat, the Houston area could face poor air quality during the weekend.
Heavy rainfall was possible in eastern Louisiana and central Alabama on Saturday, and parts of Louisiana were also at risk for flooding.
The Houston Health Department said it would distribute 400 free portable air conditioners to area seniors, people with disabilities and caregivers of disabled children to contend with the heat.
Five cooling centers also were opened — four in Houston and one in Kingwood.
Hundreds of thousands remain without power
A man walks through fallen bricks from a damaged building in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, in Houston.
David J. Phillip/AP
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David J. Phillip/AP
A man walks through fallen bricks from a damaged building in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, in Houston.
David J. Phillip/AP
The widespread destruction of Thursday’s storms brought much of Houston to a standstill. Thunderstorms and hurricane-force winds tore through the city — decimating the facade of one brick building and leaving trees, debris and shattered glass on the streets. A tornado also touched down near the northwest Houston suburb of Cypress.
More than a half-million homes and businesses in Texas remained without electricity by midday Saturday, according to PowerOutage.us. Another 21,000 customers were also without power in Louisiana, where strong winds and a suspected tornado hit.
CenterPoint Energy, which has deployed 1,000 employees to the area and is requesting 5,000 more, said power restoration could take several days or longer in some areas, and that customers need to ensure their homes can safely be reconnected.
“In addition to damaging CenterPoint Energy’s electric infrastructure and equipment, severe weather may have caused damage to customer-owned equipment” such as the weatherhead, which is where power enters the home, the company said.
Customers must have repairs completed by a qualified electrician before service can be restored, CenterPoint added.
High-voltage transmission towers that were torn apart and downed power lines pose a twofold challenge for utility companies because the damage affected transmission and distribution systems, according to Alexandria von Meier, a power and energy expert who called that a rare thing. Damage to just the distribution system is more typical, von Meier said.
How quickly repairs are made will depend on a variety of factors, including the time it takes to assess the damage, equipment replacement, roadwork access issues and workforce availability.
The storm caught many off guard
Down power lines are shown in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, near Houston.
David J. Phillip/AP
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David J. Phillip/AP
Down power lines are shown in the aftermath of a severe thunderstorm on Friday, near Houston.
David J. Phillip/AP
Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez reported late Friday that three people died during the storm, including an 85-year-old woman whose home caught fire after being struck by lightning and a 60-year-old man who had tried to use his vehicle to power his oxygen tank.
Houston Mayor John Whitmire previously said at least four other people were killed in the city when the storms swept through Harris County, which includes Houston.
School districts in the Houston area canceled classes Friday for more than 400,000 students and government offices were closed.
Houston Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles said Saturday that he hoped to reopen schools on Monday, but that is dependent upon the restoration of electricity in school buildings.
“If a school doesn’t have power, it will remain closed,” Miles told reporters during a tour of the heavily damaged Sinclair Elementary School.
Whitmire warned that police were out in force, including state troopers sent to the area to prevent looting. He said the speed and intensity of the storm caught many off guard.
Noelle Delgado, executive director of Houston Pets Alive, said she pulled up at the animal rescue on Thursday night and found the dogs and cats — more than 30 in all — uninjured, but the building’s awning had been ripped off, the sign was mangled and water was leaking inside.
She hoped to find foster homes for the animals.
“I could definitely tell that this storm was a little different,” she said. “It felt terrifying.”
State and federal recovery assistance is on the way
In light of the storm damage, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo and Whitmire both signed disaster declarations, paving the way for state and federal storm recovery assistance.
A separate disaster declaration from President Joe Biden makes federal funding available to people in seven Texas counties — including Harris — that have been affected by severe storms, straight-line winds, tornadoes and flooding since April 26.
new video loaded: F.A.A. Ignored Safety Concerns Prior to Collision Over Potomac, N.T.S.B. Says
transcript
transcript
F.A.A. Ignored Safety Concerns Prior to Collision Over Potomac, N.T.S.B. Says
The National Transportation Safety Board said that a “multitude of errors” led to the collision between a military helicopter and a commercial jet, killing 67 people last January.
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“I imagine there will be some difficult moments today for all of us as we try to provide answers to how a multitude of errors led to this tragedy.” “We have an entire tower who took it upon themselves to try to raise concerns over and over and over and over again, only to get squashed by management and everybody above them within F.A.A. Were they set up for failure?” “They were not adequately prepared to do the jobs they were assigned to do.”
By Meg Felling
January 27, 2026
President Trump speaks as U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looks on during a meeting of his Cabinet at the White House in December 2025.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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Relatives of two Trinidadian men killed in an airstrike last October are suing the U.S. government for wrongful death and for carrying out extrajudicial killings.
The case, filed in Massachusetts, is the first lawsuit over the strikes to land in a U.S. federal court since the Trump administration launched a campaign to target vessels off the coast of Venezuela. The American government has carried out three dozen such strikes since September, killing more than 100 people.
Among them are Chad Joseph, 26, and Rishi Samaroo, 41, who relatives say died in what President Trump described as “a lethal kinetic strike” on Oct. 14, 2025. The president posted a short video that day on social media that shows a missile targeting a ship, which erupts in flame.
“This is killing for sport, it’s killing for theater and it’s utterly lawless,” said Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “We need a court of law to rein in this administration and provide some accountability to the families.”
The White House and Pentagon justify the strikes as part of a broader push to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S. The Pentagon declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying it doesn’t comment on ongoing litigation.
But the new lawsuit described Joseph and Samaroo as fishermen doing farm work in Venezuela, with no ties to the drug trade. Court papers said they were headed home to family members when the strike occurred and now are presumed dead.
Neither man “presented a concrete, specific, and imminent threat of death or serious physical injury to the United States or anyone at all, and means other than lethal force could have reasonably been employed to neutralize any lesser threat,” according to the lawsuit.
Lenore Burnley, the mother of Chad Joseph, and Sallycar Korasingh, the sister of Rishi Samaroo, are the plaintiffs in the case.
Their court papers allege violations of the Death on the High Seas Act, a 1920 law that makes the U.S. government liable if its agents engage in negligence that results in wrongful death more than 3 miles off American shores. A second claim alleges violations of the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreign citizens to sue over human rights violations such as deaths that occurred outside an armed conflict, with no judicial process.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Jonathan Hafetz at Seton Hall University School of Law are representing the plaintiffs.
“In seeking justice for the senseless killing of their loved ones, our clients are bravely demanding accountability for their devastating losses and standing up against the administration’s assault on the rule of law,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior counsel at the ACLU.
U.S. lawmakers have raised questions about the legal basis for the strikes for months but the administration has persisted.
—NPR’s Quil Lawrence contributed to this report.
new video loaded: New Video Analysis Reveals Flawed and Fatal Decisions in Shooting of Pretti
By Devon Lum, Haley Willis, Alexander Cardia, Dmitriy Khavin and Ainara Tiefenthäler
January 26, 2026
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