Almost 3.4 million customers around the USA were still without electricity, and some also lost water service. Officials in Texas order millions of people to boil tap water before drinking it due to damaged pipes and infrastructure.

The National Weather Service said up to six inches of snow and ice is likely for the Philadelphia region. Still, ERCOT Senior Director of System Operations Dan Woodfin issued an optimistic report on Thursday. But the remaining Texas outages were mostly weather-related, according to the state's grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

This week's extreme weather has been blamed for the deaths of more than 30 people, some of whom perished while struggling to keep warm inside their homes.

Houston police said a woman and a girl died from carbon monoxide poisoning after sitting in a auto in a garage with the engine running to keep warm.

Meanwhile, in OR, where winter weather advisories still cover much of the state, more than 100,000 customers were still without electricity a week after outages began.

Power has been restored to more Texans, with fewer than half a million homes still without electricity.

Dashawn Walker, 33, was thrilled to find the power back on in his Dallas apartment.

'My vehicle got stranded and I was trying to sleep in the auto but it was just too cold, Hernandez said.

"It's insane", Walker said.

The extreme cold has left some residents to choose between staying in dark and cold homes, some with frozen or broken water pipes, or face COVID-19 exposure at local relief centers.

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Ms Ardern said she raised the issue with Mr Morrison a year ago , but that New Zealand's concerns had been brushed aside. New Zealand has criticized Australia for revoking the citizenship of an alleged Islamic State affiliate in Turkey.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, speaking Wednesday in the capital, Austin, called on top executives at the state's grid operator to resign over the outages.

These waivers are helping increase the delivery of water, food, and other supplies to Texas communities dealing with power and water outages.

Angry residents have trained much of their ire on ERCOT, which critics say did not heed warnings after a cold-weather meltdown in 2011 to ensure that Texas' energy infrastructure, which relies primarily on natural gas, was winterised.

"These are the most risky conditions we've ever seen in the history of PGE", said Dale Goodman, director of utility operations, who declined to predict when all customers would have power restored. Snow, ice and subfreezing weather continue to wreak havoc on the state's power grid and utilities. Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities covering 14 states from the Dakotas to the Texas Panhandle, said rolling blackouts were no longer needed, but it asked customers to conserve energy until at least 10 p.m. Saturday.

The weather also disrupted water systems in several Southern cities, including in New Orleans and Shreveport, Louisiana, where city fire trucks delivered water to several hospitals, and bottled water was being brought in for patients and staff, Shreveport television station KSLA reported.

Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt pleaded with residents to limit water usage, and Jackson, Mississippi, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said most customers were without water, with no timeline on when it would be restored.

Cruz explained that he took a commercial flight to the sunny beach resort south of the border at the request of his daughters because school had been canceled. Those of us trapped in our homes are texting and calling friends, families, and neighbors: Do you have power? Elsewhere, a grandmother and three children died when flames escaped the fireplace they were using to keep warm. In Oregon, authorities confirmed Tuesday that four people died in the Portland area of carbon monoxide poisoning.

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Biden also spoke two days ago with Abbott, who came under fire this week after initially blaming the crisis on Democratic efforts to transition to green energy sources and away from fossil fuels.

Weathersby said she spent part of Thursday outside collecting buckets of ice to melt it so she could flush her toilet and said "my back's hurting now".