Considering other states at the same latitude suffered the same storm with a heck of a lot less turmoil and disaster yes, I’d expect that an investigation would find this a case of penny wise and pound foolish. Not that Louisiana or Alabama didn’t also have power outages and such, but they weren’t as extensive, long lasting, or as damaging.
I always wondered by power grid maps of the continental United States were essentially EAST GRID, WEST GRID, and TEXAS GRID. But I really didn’t want to find the answer in THIS manner.
Yep, this is what is happening in Memphis. It’s the first time in modern history we’ve had this problem. A week and a half of well below freezing temps was just too much. We’ve had more snow totals but not on the ground for this long. They have fixed 60 water main breaks so far and expect more as the ground thaws out. And because of the resulting low pressure, it’s hard to maintain the reservoir levels.
The airport has had to close. Restaurants are closed. I just read that the National Guard is bringing in water tankers to help out one of the hospitals that had some breaks. If you can get to a store (I can’t even get down my driveway), bottled water is gone. But I’m thankful I have water and power to boil it! They say they are not going to cut off the water but I’m preparing for that just in case.
FWIW, I sent some money to Texas Habitat for Humanity, because they do long-term assistance, which these people are going to need, big time.
I see what you did there.
The natural gas wells and gathering systems are not built for the type of cold that Texas has been seeing for the past two weeks. A lot of gathering lines essentially froze, cutting off natural gas supplies to the electricity plants that burn natural gas.
Good article in the Dallas Morning News:
That seems weird to me, too. Here in northern Arkansas, we’re also always told to drip the water when it’s cold. But it can get down to the teens (Fahrenheit) and not be a problem with anything freezing. It was the fact that the high was in the teens or lower that was the problem.
This cold snap, however, apparently left all the plumbers in our town very busy. It was very difficult to get through. Fortunately, all that happened for us was that the pipes from the hot water heater to the inside burst. (The cold water for the bathtub also froze up). No one had ever told us you needed to keep the hot water dripping.
Dad has done some work as a construction worker before, and called up a retired plumber in the neighborhood who gave him tips, so he was able to repair the burst pipes himself. Fortunately, nothing else broke.
We have an electric heat wrap on the pipe now. We’d actually done that before, after the last cold snap (not quite this cold) but it had apparently broken, not heating up at all.
This thread from three years ago was about the disaster that Texas experienced due to insufficient electricity. Which of course was caused by various power plants failing in the cold weather.
So now they’re expecting another cold spell. Are the Texas power plants now prepared for this cold? Maybe someone closer to the state has a better idea, but my understanding is they aren’t. At best there’s more people with home solar/batteries. They’ll be OK, but the rest of the state will likely be in trouble.
Not all people with home solar or even solar with batteries can work off grid.
Texas turned power issues into political issues, and texas politics arent practical.
The plants themselves are only modestly better equipped to deal with the situation. An actual blizzard would probably knock out power again but we’re not expecting that - yes, a sustained cold snap but not to the same extent as 2021.
I’m reasonably sure we’ll be ok this time, mainly because a lot of the issues were due to icing, and there’s not nearly as much anticipated precipitation this time - none at all for a large portion of the state.
The cold temperatures by themselves won’t be enough, especially as it’s not forecast to be quite as cold, either - a large part of the state will at least get above freezing for a few hours Monday and Tuesday, which was not the case back in 2021.
Note - this is exactly why the powers that be continue to get away with not really doing a whole lot. The grid is robust enough for the weather we’re expecting (a once every ~decade kind of event) but not robust enough for anything worse (2021 was more like once in 2 or 3 decades).
I do still expect a fair number of burst pipes and there may be isolated brownouts but that’s more or less “normal” rather than potentially disastrous
Are the Texas power plants better prepared? No, almost nothing was done, as @DrDeth pointed out, the PTB did a lot of scapegoating, and then turned it all into political issues that were all about “freedum” and no real money was spent improving things.
While also precluded any serious attempts to reconsider Texas being able to easily pull from either other major US power grid, which would have also been a partial solution.
I happen to have a large number of family and friends living in Texas, about 2/3 in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, and the rest in Austin. The Dallas group got of pretty lucky last time, and while they’ve made some minor preparations, otherwise it’s a lot of shrugging and “what can you do” when the government won’t take any steps or responsibility.
The Austin group are former Coloradans like me, so had things like heavy clothes, Jackery batteries, canister fueled stoves, and a week worth of supplies. Sure, here in the front range area, you almost never need that much, but it’s about every decade or so, you can plan on a winter storm that leaves you unable to go out for days, and occasionally without power/heat for 24-48 hours.
Both sets have reported a run on certain supplies at stores similar to early COVID panic buying or hurricane preparedness - lots of people buying bottled water, propane fuel, heating packs, etc. But otherwise it ranges from vaguely optimistic (as @Great_Antibob pointed out, it’s not expected to be as bad) to fatalistic.
Yeah, for one, the roads should be entirely driveable, unlike 2021 where the state was blanketed in ice and snow. It’s not really a matter of optimism but realism - it won’t get as cold and even in the case some people lose power, cities are taking things seriously and preparing warming centers.
At worst, I’m expecting a few hours without power, not several days like in 2021, and even that veers towards the unrealistic end of things.
Not that I have much trust for our elected officials or for the people running the grid, but I’m not going to lose much sleep worrying about it. Should be a nice cold, albeit somewhat windy morning for the runners in the Houston Marathon this Sunday.
DFW-adjacent resident here. This is my take as well, as no one thus far has given details of what actual changes were made. To us, politicians are little more than whores servicing their corporate johns, and journalists seem incapable of covering details about the grid issues – so we expect little from either. No usable information, and no actual preparation.
Unsurprising, I guess.
The answer is still no. But we’re not average…
We were mostly prepared when the deep freeze hit in 2021, but hadn’t expected so many disasters simultaneously. Electricity, water, natural gas, and impassable roads all at once were beyond what we’d really planned for. At the time it hit, we were both ill and I was hobbling around on a cane after an injury. So we’ve made some changes in the intervening years, mainly to make things easier and safer for us to use.
Summarizing; We have generators, fuel, water, food, insulated clothing, medicines, tools, antifreeze, pumps, indoor-safe propane heaters, wood, backup lighting, usable winter transportation, and are ready for multiple weeks with no utilities or deliveries of any kind.
So, my take on the OP’s question is that Texas is collectively unprepared and completely incompetent to handle any serious blizzard scenario. Individually, we have prepared, but I suspect we’re a tiny minority.
Supplemental anecdote: I was online chatting with one of my Austin friends last night while playing World of Warcraft together. As I stated, he is a former Coloradan, and thus had all the usual supplies and battery backups and canister stoves (apartment dweller though, so fewer options). He went out on Friday to buy some “normal” groceries and saw that HEB was indeed cleared out on “emergency supplies” as I mentioned upthread.
Bottled water? Gone. Canned and dried food? Gone. Granola and other meal bars? Gone. So on and so forth. To which we engaged in the usual rants. I mean, great to have these things, but for a lot of them, you better already know how to cook, and especially for things like dried beans, you better plan on using up a lot of that stored water and hope you have a lot of fuel for a stove, because of the cooking time.
It did remind him to refill his spare watercooler style water bottle (5gal). Since Austin water is often terrible, he usually gets his drinking water from one, with one in reserve. But since he had a third not in use, he filled it up at the store kiosk, while crazed shoppers were hunting individually sealed bottled water with blood in their eyes…
I went to Harbor Freight and Tractor Supply on Friday to find some shackles/clamps (home project). TS had signs on the doors that they were out of propane and couldn’t refill anyone. HF was doing a brisk business in generators, and had moved them to the front of the store. On my neighborhood FB feed, they were discussing which stores still had propane, as it’s apparently become scarce.
20 years in NH, and I have everything I need to be an island for a week.
Since I moved to the city 5 years ago, it’s all just collecting dust in the shed. The neighbors thought I was odd when we redid a porch and added a wood stove. “Why not a gas stove?”
Sometimes I wish I had reason to use it.
We heated with wood for years, and then changed to a gas stove. But it’s propane, NG is not available at our house.
So far, so good in Austin. The state has asked people to conserve electricity this morning due to an expected surge in demand, but so far this is nothing like the ice/snow deep freeze from 2021 or the tree-pocalypse last winter.
One of my many friends from Texas just texted that they were asked to conserve power from 6 AM to 10 AM, so I think she may have actually turned the heat off, rather than just turning it down. I’m not sure that was really warranted, but four hours isn’t too long. Unless, of course, the power goes out while her heat has been off for a while.
In any case, it sounds like they will get through this okay.
Good lord, conserving power doesn’t mean freezing to death! I don’t know where she is but it’s 20 degrees outside in Austin. Tell her to turn the heat back on and just shut off any unnecessary lights and appliances.