Dec 23 (Reuters) - More than a million homes and businesses were without power on the U.S. East Coast, Midwest and Texas on Friday as winter storms battered much of the country, according to data from PowerOutage.us.Most outages were in North Carolina, with over 164,000 customers without power, followed by Virginia with over 92,000 and Connecticut with more than 89,000.More than a dozen other states east of the Mississippi River plus Oregon, Washington state, Missouri, Louisiana and Arkansas west of the Mississippi River each have more than 10,000 customers facing outages due to winter storms.Leading into the holiday weekend, the storm is expected to bring blizzard conditions to the Great Lakes region, heavy rains followed by a flash freeze on the East Coast, wind gusts of 60 miles per hour (100 km per hour) and bitter cold as far south as the U.S.-Mexico border.Temperatures in northern Georgia were forecast to hit just 10 degrees Fahrenheit (-12 Celsius) with subzero wind chills."