Linus Torvalds announced on the kernel mailing list that due to a severe winter storm at his residence in Portland, Oregon, USA, which caused network and power outages , and temperatures in the area near Portland where he lived dropped to -10°C, he was not allowed to leave. Do not pause the Linux 6.8 kernel's merge window .
Linus released the Linux 6.7 kernel on January 7 , and then opened the 6.8 merge window, which is expected to last two weeks. However, when the merge window was in the middle stage last weekend, the place where he lived was cut off from power and network due to a winter storm. Linus said it usually takes a long time to restore power and network, and he has experienced it taking more than a week for power to be restored.
Winter storm scene in Oregon, from https://www.opb.org/article
Linus also said that he has no plans to continue working at Starbucks because kernel development is not important enough to find warmth and Wi-Fi . So according to the current situation, Linux 6.8 RC1 will most likely be delayed.