The large jet transports with which I'm familiar have window heat controllers that slowly "ramp-up" the window heating current according to a carefully selected temperature/current schedule.
I can't comment on why so many windscreens cracked on one day at one airport, but it seems to me that it depends on aircraft type and the design of the window heat control system. A manually operated, double switch position system could easily be prone to delivering too much current in extremely cold conditions; but I would have thought that the Flight Manual would contain procedures for dealing with that.