Add Mother Nature to the pile of crises on President Joe Biden's plate.A month into the job and focused on the coronavirus, Biden is seeing his disaster management skills tested after winter storms plunged Texas, Oklahoma and neighboring states into an unusual deep freeze that left millions shivering in homes that lost heat and power, and in many homes, water.At least 69 deaths across the U.S. have been blamed on the blast of unseasonable weather.The White House announced on Saturday that the president had declared a major disaster in Texas, and he has asked federal agencies to identify additional resources to address the suffering.Biden came into office Jan. 20 promising to tackle a series of brewing crises, starting with the coronavirus pandemic and its ripple effects on the economy. He tacked on systemic racism and climate change as top priorities. And now he's contending with storms that have not only imperiled Americans but also delayed the shipment and administration of millions of doses of coronavirus vaccines.Biden said Friday that he hopes to travel to Texas next week but doesn't want his presence and the accompanying presidential entourage to distract from the recovery.“They're working like the devil to take care of their folks,” Biden said of Texas officials. He said he'd make a decision early next week about travel.Biden, who offered himself during the campaign as the experienced and empathetic candidate the nation needed at this moment in time, is working on several fronts to address the situation — and to avoid repeating the mistakes of predecessors who got tripped up by inadequate or insensitive responses in times of disaster.Part of the job of being president is responding to the destruction left behind by earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters, or events like deadly mass shootings, or even acts of terrorism.Some have handled such situations better than others.George W. Bush earned praise for his leadership after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but stumbled during his administration’s halting response to the humanitarian disaster that unfolded in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast four years later.Barack Obama said he should have anticipated the blowback he got for going to the golf course right after he condemned the beheading of a kidnapped American journalist by Islamist militants in 2014. Obama was vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard at the time.Donald Trump was criticized for tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd of people in Puerto Rico who had endured Hurricane Maria’s pummeling of the island in 2017. He defended tossing the towels, saying the people were “having fun.”Bill Clinton, who famously claimed during the 1992 presidential campaign that “I feel your pain,” was a natural at connecting with disaster victims.Just this week, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas showed how quickly one bad move during a crisis can become a public relations disaster for a politician.Cruz came under attack for traveling to Mexico while his constituents suffered without power, heat and running water. His explanation — that his daughters pushed for the getaway because they were out of school — was particularly panned. Cruz later said the trip was a mistake.Biden has tweeted about Texas and the other affected states, while the White House has issued numerous statements aimed at demonstrating that the federal government is in command of the situation. The president is getting regular updates from his staff and already declared states of emergency in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana — adding the disaster designation announced Saturday for Texas.The Federal Emergency Management Agency has shipped dozens of generators and supplies, including fuel, water, blankets and ready-to-eat meals, to the affected areas.Biden has spoken to the governors of the seven states most affected by the winter weather. He tweeted a photo of himself on the phone with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas.Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, a staunch supporter of Trump's, was quick to praise Biden for swift action on a disaster declaration.After speaking with Biden by telephone earlier this week, Stitt specifically thanked the president for “taking the time to reach out this afternoon and offer the federal government’s help for Oklahomans. We had a very productive call and I look forward to working together to find solutions as we recover from this historic storm.”Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, said Biden is “well-suited" to deal with the disaster because of his decades of service in the U.S. Senate and as a former vice president and because of “his genuine concern for people.”“He's got to show empathy right off the bat,” Perry said in an interview. “It's important for a president to go to a place that’s been battered, but be careful about the footprint. He doesn’t want to make things worse.”Biden, should he decide to visit Texas next week, could also use the trip to press his point that climate change is real and must not go unaddressed, and that the state could do things like winterize its power plants to be better prepared for future storms, Perry said.But he should take care to not do so in a scolding kind of way.“We know he cares about climate change, and this is a way to convince people,” Perry said.___Associated Press writer Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

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Related video above: Chef Rino Roma cooks up cicada bruschetta: It's what's for dinnerThe cicada symphony is coming, but cool weather is putting a damper on the orchestra.Maybe you have never heard it before, but it can be beautiful to some and maddening to others. Scientists who study them have waited 17 years for these noise machines to emerge from their slumber.This week's March-like weather in May is keeping many of the sound-producing insects from joining their friends on cue."This cold snap we're having here in the Midwest and out East is certainly delaying the mass emergence of periodical cicadas," entomologist Gene Kritsky told CNN. "Normally, we would have had cicadas emerging probably any day now," he said Tuesday.Kritsky, who says cicadas helped him get tenure, is the dean of behavioral and natural sciences at Mount St. Joseph University in Cincinnati.The black-and-red periodical insects usually emerge the first week in May, he said. "That mass emergence hasn't really kicked in yet," Kritsky said, but the delay is only expected to be for a few days.Bug enthusiasts are anticipating Brood X of the periodical cicadas to be the largest emergence event since 2004. Billions of cicadas across 16 states will soon be singing and looking for a mate, covering a swath of land from Tennessee to New York.Brood X -- pronounced Brood 10 for the roman numeral -- is one of the 15 periodical cicada broods in the U.S. Most of these periodical cicadas emerge once every 17 years, but there are a few that come out in 13-year cycles.These special cicadas are different from the annual cicadas, which are green, brown and black with green eyes that emerge in small numbers. The periodical cicadas have a different agenda -- they come out in droves so they can survive predators from picking them off before they can mate.Some cicadas have already emerged in north Georgia, North and South Carolina and outside Washington, D.C., Kritsky said. Warm temperatures coaxed them out of their slumber, but there aren't many of them yet because of the shift in weather."Much of the region -- where cicadas will emerge -- continue to have below-average high temperatures through the weekend. Monday looks to be the first day that really gets back to normal temperatures," CNN meteorologist Judson Jones said.An unseasonably cold air mass over much of the Southeast is dropping temperatures 10 to 25 degrees below the seasonal averages. From Wednesday into Thursday, as many as 32 record cold high temperatures are expected across the South.The latest cold snap is slowing most of the brood from joining. The cold doesn't hurt them or even kill them -- it just signals to the cicadas that it's not time to emerge from their subterranean slumber, Kritsky said."When that happens, the cicadas just go deeper in their tunnel where the temperatures drop," Kritsky said. "They know what to do. They've been doing it for 17 years."The cicadas that already emerged just have to deal with the chilly weather, as they are cold-blooded. The insects rely on the air temperature and sunlight to warm them up enough to go about their singing and mating.Normally, it takes the insects five days to harden their exoskeletons so they can fly and start singing, Kritsky explained. The cooler temperatures will slow down the process and keep the singing much quieter than the usual roar.The males do all the singing. After a pair of cicadas mate and the female lays eggs in the tree, the nymphs drop out and burrow into the ground.Don't worry, though. The Climate Prediction Center forecasts for next week and weekend are showing above-average temperatures, Jones said."If I were a betting man, I would look to have your earplugs ready to go by the end of next week," he said.The more cicadas, the louder things can get. Parts of Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati are expected to be the loudest spots, Kritsky said.For these periodical cicadas, it's all about having the right soil temperature. When the soil is at 64 degrees Fahrenheit for three days or longer, the cicadas start to emerge, Kritsky said.The soil temperature doesn't change as quickly as the air temperature, he said. If you have some daily high temperatures in the upper 70s and low 80s, that will speed up the soil rising in temperature.Cicadas depend on the climate and they take cues from Mother Nature to know when it's time to say hello to humans."Cicadas are bugs of climate. They evolve their long life cycle in response to the Ice Age, that is the current working model that we're looking at," Kritsky said. "We know that the increasing temperatures we've experienced over the last few years is causing some of the broods to actually spin-off four-year accelerations."In the year 2000, four years before Brood X was scheduled to appear, cicadas came out early. Many died, but some in southwestern Ohio survived to form a separate group that reemerged in 2017.The lifespan of Brood X cicadas is 17 years, from the time the eggs hatch and the nymphs burrow to the end of their life after they emerge and mate.If you see a cicada, there is one thing you can do to help scientists -- there's an app for that.Cicada Safari allows you to snap a photo and tag a location where you saw the red-eyed insect emerging. Experts verify each image to make sure it's a periodical cicada, said Kritsky, who created the app with the Center for IT Engagement at his university.All the cicada needs now is its own Instagram account. The last time these appeared, Facebook was in its infancy.