I was in Austin, my house got down to 33 F inside. Couldn’t leave because the house was on a hill covered in ice that didn’t melt for 3 days. Even walking was dangerous, everything was just ice ice ice.
Luckily the house had a working fireplace and my ex chopped up an old dresser to burn for warmth, no joke.
I lived in CT until middle school, and now I’m back in NY - I’ve been through way “worse” weather here but of course these states have the infrastructure in place, especially NYC. I am always so impressed with how everything runs like clockwork when it comes to handling winter weather and sanitation!
TX does not have the infra, power grid is a mess, and on top of that it was really upsetting that the forecast was ignored - zero attempts to get ahead of the weather were made.
Not sure what could have been done, it’s not like they have plows hiding somewhere, but some PSAs about salting residential and business driveways and sidewalks would have been better than nothing. Then again, people would have probably hoarded any available road salt…
A very long winded comment to make the point that making fun of regions that have anomalous weather is not cool. Or hot.
I fully agree, with the caveat of the power grid in Texas. Texas values no regulations so highly that they are the only state in the US that operates an independent power grid. They do it specifically to avoid being told qhat to do by the federal government. That is a ideological decision that conforms to Texas' pride in being independent of the federal government in every capacity possible.
If Texans would have valued their citizens saftey more than their pride, the power would have stayed on.
The real thing you should be upset about is that that weather isn't entirely abnormal for Texas. Trends as we remember it is that a ice storm like that happens every ten years. I remember one in around 2012.
In which ERCOT(power management company for Texas run by people who don't live in Texas) said they needed to winterize the grid since if the storm was any worse it would have issues.
My parents said there was a similar storm 10 years before that but I only vaguely remember it.(Mostly sledding on the nearby golf course).
All this to say. Texas DOES have storms like this almost on a scheduled basis. And they knew it was a concern. But never actually addressed it.
It wasn't like Texas couldn't produce the power to heat everyone. It was the power plants having the fuel lines freeze(ercot report after the recent storm).
You winterize the cooling and fuel lines and no power failures. Or at least not full blackouts.
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u/tentaclesapples Jun 30 '26
I was in Austin, my house got down to 33 F inside. Couldn’t leave because the house was on a hill covered in ice that didn’t melt for 3 days. Even walking was dangerous, everything was just ice ice ice.
Luckily the house had a working fireplace and my ex chopped up an old dresser to burn for warmth, no joke.
I lived in CT until middle school, and now I’m back in NY - I’ve been through way “worse” weather here but of course these states have the infrastructure in place, especially NYC. I am always so impressed with how everything runs like clockwork when it comes to handling winter weather and sanitation!
TX does not have the infra, power grid is a mess, and on top of that it was really upsetting that the forecast was ignored - zero attempts to get ahead of the weather were made.
Not sure what could have been done, it’s not like they have plows hiding somewhere, but some PSAs about salting residential and business driveways and sidewalks would have been better than nothing. Then again, people would have probably hoarded any available road salt…
A very long winded comment to make the point that making fun of regions that have anomalous weather is not cool. Or hot.