As of Sunday, there were more than 14 million people in the U.S. state of Texas who still didn't have reliable running water.
Authorities were able to get electricity running again for many of them though, tens of thousands were still in the dark and the cold over the weekend. And outside thermometers finally climbed back up to the 60's and 70's on Sunday following a week of record cold temperatures and record amounts of snow.
That led to recording breaking demand for electricity in the state and that coincided with several major sources of power breaking down. Water pipes froze and burst in unheated homes. Water pipes froze and burst in hundreds of water systems.
Problems were reported in more than 1,300 public systems last week. That effected 4/5 of all the counties in Texas and roughly half the state's population. Many people were put under boil water advisories . That means that even if their water was running, it might not have been safe to drink.
So residents were advised either to use bottled water or to boil for one minute any tap water they planned to use for drinking, preparing food, brushing teeth or even giving to pets. There have been some uplifting stories that have come out of Texas' hardships.
Volunteers have been giving away hot meals and warm clothing to those in need. A furniture store owner opened his business to thousands of people who came in for warmth and he allowed hundreds to sleep on his new mattresses which he'll later sell at a discount. Many other Texans who've been hunkered down without somewhere else to go have been using snow to keep systems running in their homes.
The first pictures have come in from NASA's latest mission to Mars. Last Thursday, the $2.7 billion Perseverance mission logged the ninth successful Mars landing by the United States. That's significant in part because roughly half the missions to the red planet have failed.
The Perseverance rover has been going through a series of checks after arriving on Mars' surface sending back these images, one of the first things it's done. Perseverance landed in a crater where scientists think a lake might have been billions of years ago. So over the course of its two year mission, Perseverance is set to travel 15 miles investigating the crater and it's rocks.
