A winter storm watch has been issued by the National Weather Service for Dallas-Fort Worth, with impacts coming late this week and into the weekend.  The alert warns of hazardous winter weather, including snow, ice and freezing temperatures, in all of North and much of Central Texas. Freezing precipitation is expected to start Friday afternoon and continue through Saturday night. view article

Ice and snow on the roads, in parking lots and on walkways is melting. Dallas-Fort Worth school districts decide if it’s enough for kids to return to school. Dallas ISD says no.  After a winter storm hit Dallas-Fort Worth over the weekend and led North Texas schools to cancel class, several districts are starting to announce that they will remain closed Thursday.  Many schools and universities canceled class Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. While sunnier skies returned Wednesday afternoon, helping to melt ice on roads, some districts determined that conditions still did not seem safe enough to have students return to classrooms. view article

Ice and snow on the roads, in parking lots and on walkways is melting. Dallas-Fort Worth school districts decide if it’s enough for kids to return to school. Dallas ISD says no. view article

The fog produces a drizzle that will freeze and form a clear glaze, presenting a hazard similar to black ice. (no article) view article

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered a pause on new H-1B visa applications for foreign workers at all state agencies and public universities, effective immediately through May 31, 2027. This directive aims to prioritize hiring Texans for positions funded by taxpayers, with exceptions requiring Texas Workforce Commission approval.   Key details of the directive:  Scope: Applies to all state-run agencies, public universities, and higher education institutions in Texas.  Duration: The freeze lasts until May 31, 2027.  Data Reporting: Institutions must submit detailed reports on current H-1B holders, including job titles, countries of origin, and expiration dates.  Exceptions: Exceptions may be granted by the Texas Workforce Commission.  Context: This move follows increased scrutiny of foreign worker usage in state-funded institutions, following reports of high-cost sponsorship, according to KSAT. The policy is designed to ensure that state government and educational institutions prioritize Texas residents for employment opportunities.   Gov. Abbott orders Texas universities, agencies to halt H-1B visa ... view article

LUFKIN — ​​Thousands of East Texans remain without power days after a winter storm paralyzed most of the state over the weekend. Many may be without power until Sunday as utility workers traverse icy roads in dense forests to restore power.Winter Storm Fern spread across the U.S. from New Mexico to the Northeast over the weekend, leaving thick layers of ice and snow in its wake. Residents across Texas saw temperatures drop below freezing and power outages that lasted anywhere from a few minutes to days.  East Texas was the only region in Texas to lose power for an extended period of time. view article

Texas winter storm updates: Power grid holds up through its tightest condition on Monday, Gov. Abbott says   While wintry precipitation exits Texas, freezing temperatures will continue Monday over much of the state.  The severe weather has triggered hundreds of flight cancellations in Texas and many school districts are closed  Monday.  While this storm wasn’t as severe as 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, which killed at least 246 people, memories of the grid’s failure are still fresh almost five years later. view article

The district canceled school for Monday and Tuesday.    No matter when schools reopen, Dallas ISD won’t need to add extra days to its calendar to make up for this week’s closures.  Over the weekend, district officials announced school would be canceled on Monday and Tuesday, as roads across much of North Texas remain icy. In their announcement, district officials said they would make those two days up on April 6 and May 4. view article

After closely evaluating road conditions in coordination with the City of La Porte, meeting with the National Weather Service and Emergency Operations officials, and consulting with other area superintendents, La Porte ISD will resume a regular schedule on Tuesday.  Please note that the forecast continues to call for very cold temperatures in the morning. Students and staff are strongly encouraged to dress warmly — in layers — especially those waiting at bus stops.  We appreciate everyone’s patience and support during this time and look forward to seeing our students and staff on Tuesday morning. Adam J. Holland   view article

Houston ISD announced that it plans to reopen classes and resume normal operations Tuesday following the winter storm that brought subfreezing temperatures to the area this weekend. HISD, along with every other public school district in the Houston area, canceled classes Monday out of an abundance of caution due to hazardous travel conditions and dangerously low temperatures.  The district wrote that its facilities and maintenance teams have taken proactive steps to ensure its campuses are ready to welcome students and staff back Tuesday. view article

Austin ISD, Leander ISD and Round Rock ISD are among about a dozen Central Texas schools districts that have canceled classes and extracurricular activities for Monday, Jan. 26, citing continued freezing temperatures and icy roads.  As of 11:30 a.m., Liberty Hill ISD had not announced a decision on canceling classes. view article

Ice quickly formed on Houston freeways this morning so I encourage y'all to do the same and stay home today and tomorrow. All Houston-area school districts have canceled classes tomorrow. If it's essential to go to the grocery store, we’ve compiled a list of store operating hours for today and tomorrow.  Some areas experienced power outages this morning. If you were impacted, you can track power outages across the state in real time in our tracker.   Local utility CenterPoint Energy, which maintains power lines in the city of Houston and much of the metro area, reported approximately 1,400 customers experiencing power outages as of noon. Company officials said they expect power to be restored to these customers today.  view article

Georgetown ISD is among about a dozen Central Texas school districts that have canceled classes and extracurricular activities for Monday, Jan. 26, citing continued freezing temperatures and icy roads.  view article

Many Texans are having flashbacks to the deadly winter freeze that crippled the state’s isolated power grid nearly five years ago. view article

State and local officials say they’re better prepared than they were five years ago when Winter Storm Uri blanketed the state, killing hundreds and leaving scores without power and water.  Nearly five years after Winter Storm Uri sparked widespread power outages and killed hundreds of Texans, officials and residents are once more girding for a round of severe winter weather that will blanket large parts of the state.  Dangerously cold temperatures from an arctic blast will descend upon the state beginning Friday morning, and with the cold come chances of wintry precipitation in the form of snow, sleet and freezing rain. That winter blast is expected to grip the state from Friday evening to early next week. view article

Cold front day has arrived in Texas, and the forecast is becoming clearer as models come into better agreement on the timing of the arctic air and expected precipitation.  One key change in the latest outlook is a slightly slower-moving arctic front, delaying the onset of wintry weather. Despite the slower timing, significant hazards are still expected across the region, prompting the National Weather Service to upgrade the area to a winter storm warning beginning Saturday morning.  A strong cold front will push into North Texas on Friday before slowly sliding south, reaching Central Texas by Friday night. Ahead of the front, temperatures will briefly climb from the 50s at daybreak to the mid-60s by the afternoon under overcast skies. Light morning showers will give way to more widespread rain, with scattered showers and thunderstorms developing late in the afternoon and evening as the cold front moves in.  Cold front day has arrived in Texas, and the forecast is becoming clearer as models come into better agreement on the timing of the arctic air and expected precipitation. view article

Cold front day has arrived in Texas, and the forecast is becoming clearer as models come into better agreement on the timing of the arctic air and expected precipitation.  One key change in the latest outlook is a slightly slower-moving arctic front, delaying the onset of wintry weather. Despite the slower timing, significant hazards are still expected across the region, prompting the National Weather Service to upgrade the area to a winter storm warning beginning Saturday morning.  A strong cold front will push into North Texas on Friday before slowly sliding south, reaching Central Texas by Friday night. Ahead of the front, temperatures will briefly climb from the 50s at daybreak to the mid-60s by the afternoon under overcast skies. Light morning showers will give way to more widespread rain, with scattered showers and thunderstorms developing late in the afternoon and evening as the cold front moves in.  view article

Nearly five years after Winter Storm Uri sparked widespread power outages and killed hundreds of Texans, officials and residents are once more girding for a round of severe winter weather that will blanket large parts of the state.  Dangerously cold temperatures from an arctic blast will descend upon the state beginning Friday morning, and with the cold come chances of wintry precipitation in the form of snow, sleet and freezing rain. That winter blast is expected to grip the state from Friday evening to early next week.  Gov. Greg Abbott said at a press conference Thursday morning that he was issuing a disaster declaration for 134 counties. Abbott’s office didn’t immediately release the names of those counties, though the governor said the northern two-thirds of the state — from the Panhandle to potentially as far south as the San Antonio region — was expected to be hit the hardest. view article

Forecasters are warning that a new storm could bring ice and power outages across the South this weekend  — With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures in the nation’s northern tier, a new storm is set to emerge this weekend that could coat roads, trees and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the South.  The storm arriving late this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be a “widespread potentially catastrophic event from Texas to the Carolinas,” said Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. view article

A construction worker died Wednesday on the Converse Elementary School campus, according to the Judson Independent School District. The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the worker on Wednesday as Baltazar Rubio-Olvera, 63. A Judson ISD spokesperson said Rubio-Olvera was employed with a third-party construction company contracted for the project. view article

A quick-hitting blast of winter may sweep into North Texas and the Panhandle late Wednesday into Thursday, bringing a sudden drop in temperatures and the potential for up to an inch of snow in a few spots, the National Weather Service in Amarillo warns. view article

Texas redistricting fight continues | To The Point with Alex Bell Get the news today live and weather with the free ABC10+ TV streaming app: https://www.abc10.com/article/about-u... … view article

Three lawsuits were filed on Monday related to the catastrophic flood.  Families of flood victims filed a lawsuit against Camp Mystic and its owners. The petition features charges including gross negligence and “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”  The Eastland family has long owned the camp, which experienced catastrophic floods on July 4, resulting in the deaths of 20 girls and two teenage counselors.  Camp Mystic sits on 725 acres in the Texas Hill Country on the Guadalupe River. It was founded in 1926 and purchased by the grandparents of Richard Eastland in 1939. The estate of Richard Eastland—who died while attempting to save campers—is named in the lawsuit. view article

On a Sunday morning last month, James Taq’ac Amik was huddled on a small bridge with his girlfriend. At 4 a.m., they had scrambled into an 18-foot aluminum motor boat, fleeing floodwaters from a massive storm surge that inundated Kipnuk, a village of 700 in the heart of western Alaska’s sprawling Kuskokwim river delta.   “I couldn’t make it up. I tried, but the wind was too strong to try and go by boat, so we ended up staying on the bridge for five hours,” Amik said. Things only grew more dramatic. “The houses started drifting away around 5:30 a.m.,” Amik said. “There was still lights in them, there was people in them.”   When they set out, the couple were heading to Kipnuk’s public school, the largest building in the Alaska Native Yup’ik village. At least that building, they hoped at the time, would be secure. view article

As my driving school instructor once told our class, “If you stall out on train tracks, that’s about as bad of luck as you can have. Don’t do anything important for the rest of the day.”  The Vandegrift High School Marching Band had a pretty wild day on their way to the state competition in San Antonio. Their equipment trailer was hit by a Union Pacific train at a crossing on Carolina Street and Hoefgen Avenue. The crash messed up the front of the truck, but somehow most of the instruments made it out okay. After hearing about what happened, other Texas schools quickly stepped in to help. They loaned instruments and gear so Vandegrift could still perform that night at the UIL State Marching Band Competition in the Alamodome. view article

The annual window to sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act opens Nov. 1, and many Texans are expected to pay more for coverage this year.  Enhanced premium tax credits that have helped ACA enrollees shave off the cost of their premiums are slated to expire at the end of the year. The loss of the subsidies will have an outsized effect on Texas, where nearly 4 million people signed up for ACA coverage this year. Policy experts fear that ratcheting up the cost of ACA coverage will make it so unaffordable that people will drop health insurance coverage altogether.  Additionally, funding for navigators, which helped 26,533 Texans sign up for ACA last year, has been reduced by 90% this year. view article

A fifth grade Lumberton Independent School District student reported "vulgar" language in the STAAR reading test last month, according to information from LISD.  view article

Vidor ISD superintendent Jay Killgo estimates the district has $12-13 million in damages from Harvey. Both Oak Forest Elementary and Vidor Middle School are unusable right now. Those students are going elsewhere, which is overcrowding some schools. view article

Burnet school district officials were probably expecting to get more than two years from the synthetic turf installed at Bulldog Field in 2015, but that didn’t happen and it’s now set the district back $150,000. Burnet Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Keith McBurnett, however, said the district is looking to get $105,000 back from one manufacturer. Last year, officials noticed some turf fibers sticking up higher than others, so they took a closer look, McBurnett said. “To most people, it probably wasn’t noticeable,” he said. “We had all the experts look at the field, and they looked at the backside. It needed to be replaced.” view article

North American Solutions (NAS), a leading provider of insurance and risk management services for public entities, is excited to announce that Michelle Faust, currently Director, Safety & Risk Management at Round Rock ISD, will be joining the NAS team in January. view article

A teen who was severely bruised in a "brutal and excessive" nightstick attack by a Pasadena ISD school resource officer has settled his federal lawsuit for $60,000. Cesar Suquet Jr. was 16 in May 2014 when he went to the principal's office at South Houston High School to retrieve his cell phone, which had been confiscated earlier that day. His request was declined and he was told to leave. view article

Garland ISD was one of just 10 districts statewide recently honored by The Texas Association of School Boards (TASB). The district’s Risk Management Department earned a 2015 TASB Risk Management Fund Innovation Award for its creative safety video campaign. view article

Abilene ISD board approved the bid on Monday evening at its agenda review meeting. Construction coordinator for the district, Joe Humphrey, says Martinez Elementary took the brunt of the storm. view article

Three students from Stehlik Intermediate School in the Aldine Independent School District were taken to an area hospital Tuesday morning after a minor collision with a cement mixer. The wreck happened about 8 a.m. on West Road at Deer Trail Drive as the bus was transporting students to the school at 400 West Road, a school district spokeswoman said. The school is just west of Interstate 45. view article