East Texans hit hard by power outages

EAST TEXAS — Power outages emerged front and center Wednesday afternoon as winter weather persisted in East Texas. Our news partner KETK reported counties throughout the area were affected. As of late afternoon, Smith County alone was reporting over 32,000 outages. Among other things, some traffic signals in Tyler were out of commission. Drivers were urged to exercise extreme caution in such situations — along with keeping continued hazardous road conditions in mind in some areas. Crews were working to restore power as soon as possible.