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News Story Investigation Essay Texas Storm

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News Story Investigation Essay Texas Storm

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AUSTIN, TEXAS - A sprawling blast of winter weather across the U.S. plunged Texas into an unusually snowy emergency Monday that knocked out power for more than 2 million people, shut down grocery stores and air travel and closed schools ahead of frigid days still to come.

As nightfall threatened to plummet temperatures again into single digits, officials warned that homes still without power would likely not have heat until at least Tuesday, as frustration mounted and the state's electric grid came under growing demand and criticism.

"Things will likely get worse before they get better," said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the top elected official in the county of nearly 5 million people around Houston.

The toll of the worsening conditions included the delivery of new COVID-19 vaccine shipments, which were expected to be delayed until at least midweek. Massive power outages across Houston included a facility storing 8,000 doses of Moderna vaccine, leaving health officials scrambling to find takers at the same time authorities were pleading for people to stay home.

Temperatures nosedived into the single-digits as far south as San Antonio, and homes that had already been without electricity for hours had no certainty about when the lights and heat would come back on, as the state's overwhelmed power grid began imposing blackouts that are typically only seen in 100-degree Fahrenheit (38-degree Celsius) summers.

The storm was part of a massive system that brought snow, sleet and freezing rain to the southern Plains and was spreading across the Ohio Valley and to the Northeast. The Southwest Power Pool, a group of utilities across 14 states, called for rolling outages because the supply of reserve energy had been exhausted. Some utilities said they were starting blackouts, while others urged customers to reduce power usage.

"We're living through a really historic event going on right now," said Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma, pointing to all of Texas under a winter storm warning and the extent of the freezing temperatures.

State officials said surging demand, driven by people trying to keep their homes warm, and cold weather knocking some power stations offline had pushed Texas' system beyond the limits.

"This weather event, it's really unprecedented. We all living here know that," said Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. He defended preparations made by grid operators and described the demand on the system as record-setting.

"This event was well beyond the design parameters for a typical, or even an extreme, Texas winter that you would normally plan for. And so that is really the result that we're seeing," Woodfin said.

More than 500 people were hunkering down at one shelter in Houston, but Mayor Sylvester Turner said other warming centers had to be shut down because those locations, too, lost power.

The largest grocery store chain in Texas, H-E-B, closed locations around Austin and San Antonio, cities that are unaccustomed to snow and have little resources to clear roads. The slow thaw and more frigid lows ahead was also taking a toll on Texas' distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

State health officials said Texas, which was due to receive more than 400,000 additional vaccine doses this week, now does not expect deliveries to occur until at least Wednesday.

The weather also put existing vaccine supply in jeopardy. Rice University on Monday abruptly began offering vaccines on its closed Houston campus after Harris Health System told the school it had about 1,000 vaccines that "were going to go to waste," said Doug Miller, a university spokesman. "The window was just a couple hours. They have to take care of it quickly," Miller said.

Harris County officials said a facility storing the vaccines had lost power Monday and that a backup generator also failed. Hidalgo said she did not believe any vaccines were lost.

Caught without enough groceries on hand, Lauren Schneider, a 24-year-old lab technician, walked to a Dallas grocery store near her home Monday morning dressed in a coat, hat and face mask. Schneider said she didn't feel comfortable driving with the roads covered in snow and ice. She said she hadn't seen a serious snowfall in Dallas since her childhood.

"I really didn't think it's would be this serious," said Schneider.

Teresa and Luke Fassetta, trundling through the snow carrying grocery bags, said the store lost power while they were shopping. The couple said they lost power overnight, then got it back around 9 a.m., and they were hoping it would still be on when they arrived home. If not, Teresa said, "we just have a bunch of blankets and candles and two cats to keep us warm."

Several cities in the U.S. saw record lows as Arctic air remained over the central part of the country. In Minnesota, the Hibbing/Chisholm weather station registered minus 38 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 39 degrees Celsius), while Sioux Falls, South Dakota, dropped to minus 26 Fahrenheit (minus 26 degrees Celsius).

In Kansas, where wind chills dropped to as low as minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 34 degrees Celsius) in some areas, Gov. Laura Kelly declared a state of disaster.

Most government offices and schools were closed for Presidents Day, and authorities pleaded with residents to stay home. Louisiana State Police reported that it had investigated nearly 75 weather-related crashes caused by a mixture of snow, sleet and freezing rain in the past 24 hours.

"We already have some accidents on our roadways," Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said during a morning news conference. "It is slick and it is dangerous."

Air travel was also affected. By midmorning, 3,000 flights had been canceled across the country, about 1,600 of them at Dallas/Fort Worth International and Bush Intercontinental airports in Texas. At DFW, the temperature was 4 degrees Fahrenheit (-15 degrees Celsius) - 3 degrees (-16 degrees) colder than Moscow.

In Houston, officials said Bush Intercontinental Airport runways would remain closed until at least 1 p.m. Tuesday, a day longer than previously expected.

The storm arrived over a three-day holiday weekend that has seen the most U.S. air travel since the period around New Year's. More than 1 million people went through airport security checkpoints on Thursday and Friday. However, that was still less than half the traffic of a year ago, before the pandemic hit with full force.

The southern Plains had been gearing up for the winter weather for the better part of the weekend. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for all of the state's 254 counties. Abbott, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson each activated National Guard units to assist state agencies with tasks including rescuing stranded drivers.

President Joe Biden also declared an emergency in Texas in a statement Sunday night. The declaration is intended to add federal aid to state and local response efforts.

Bleiberg reported from Dallas. Associated Press journalists David Koenig in Dallas, Juan A. Lozano in Houston, Rebecca Reynolds Yonker in Louisville, Ky., Kate Brumback in Atlanta, Margaret Stafford in Liberty, Mo., and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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'Things will likely get worse': Millions without power in Texas as snowstorm slams US

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AUSTIN, TEXAS - A sprawling blast of winter weather across the U.S. plunged Texas into an unusually snowy emergency Monday that knocked out power for more than 2 million people, shut down grocery stores and air travel and closed schools ahead of frigid days still to come.

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Even their beaches are covered in snow.

Most of the US states are deep in snow at the moment, with a few exceptions. Recently, the state of Texas has joined the list of areas hit by major snowfall.

Over the Valentine's Day weekend, the Lone Star State saw a huge winter storm that affected all 254 of their counties - something they hadn't seen in exactly 126 years! Now there is news of another storm on the horizon.

The sight of snow in Texas was definitely a strange one. Even Illinois meteorologist, Kevin Lighty, tweeted a picture of a snowy beach stating, "Oh, you know just your normal snow on the beach in Galveston, Texas."

CBS Austin news anchor, John-Carlos Estrada, was another one who showed off snow day photos to Twitter. In fact, there were plenty of Texans taking to social media to show odd the snowfall. But there was a mix of both excitement and anxiety amongst those living in Texas as the snow, while beautiful to look at, has caused a number of problems.

Texas has no infrastructure in place to withstand extremely cold templates, and as a result, there have been many issues such as burst pipes, dangerously icy roads, and rolling blackouts.

As a result, many Texans have done their best to try and make the best out of a bad situation. There were those on social media who poked fun and the mess, while others just shared themselves doing their best to enjoy the snow while they had it.

Are you in Texas? How are you dealing with the snow fall? Let us know!

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Texas Is Experiencing Snow In All Counties For The First Time In 126 Years

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Even their beaches are covered in snow. Most of the US states are deep in snow at the moment, with a few exceptions. Recently, the state of Texas has joined the list of areas hit by major snowfall.

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Snowmen, baseball and dogs’ first snow. How Texas reacted to #Snowmageddon2021

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Snowmen, baseball and dogs’ first snow. How Texas reacted to #Snowmageddon2021

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Stevenson, S. (2021, February 15). Snowmen, baseball and dogs’ first snow. How Texas reacted to #Snowmageddon2021. Fort Worth Star-Telegram. https://www.star-telegram.com/news/weather-news/article249257035.html.

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Save your condescension, Northerners.

No matter how normal it is to you, Texas doesn't often see the kind of snow event we had Sunday.

(And there's more coming, apparently.)

So forgive us for helping #Snowmageddon2021 trend on the Internet and celebrating the rarity with our social media posts showing our dogs prancing around in their first snow, our kids building their first snowmen, and throwing their first snowball.

In fact, we even posted peaceful images of our neighborhoods covered in perfectly pristine snow, unmarred by tire tracks or footsteps.

Stopped for some grub.

Lots of people had the same idea.

I grew up in TX and worked in NM for about 3 years. It would snow like this around the mountains.

I was in awe the first time I saw it.

NEVER expected to see something similar in North Texas. pic.twitter.com/LgzIglBTF0
- Matt Howerton (@HowertonNews) February 15, 2021

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Snowmen, baseball and dogs' first snow. How Texas reacted to #Snowmageddon2021

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Save your condescension, Northerners. No matter how normal it is to you, Texas doesn't often see the kind of snow event we had Sunday. (And there's more coming, apparently.) So forgive us for helping #Snowmageddon2021 trend on the Internet and celebrating the rarity with our social media posts showing our dogs prancing around in their first snow, our kids building their first snowmen, and throwing their first snowball.

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Here's how a week of frigid weather and catastrophe unfolded in Texas

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Here's how a week of frigid weather and catastrophe unfolded in Texas

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Maxouris, C. (2021, February 21). Here's how a week of frigid weather and catastrophe unfolded in Texas. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/21/weather/texas-winter-storm-timeline/index.html.

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Here’s how a week of frigid weather and catastrophe unfolded in Texas | CNN

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After a devastating week for the Lone Star state, finally some relief as temperatures rise. But many Texans have only just began recovering from the unprecedented devastation that the rounds of brutal winter storms unleashed over the past seven days.

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Deadly Cold Snap Shuts Down Central U.S. Texas is Ground Zero

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Deadly Cold Snap Shuts Down Central U.S. Texas is Ground Zero

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Freedman, A., Cappucci, M., Bellware, K., & Kornfield, M. (2021, February 18). Deadly cold snap shuts down central U.S. Texas is ground zero. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/02/15/texas-oklahoma-record-cold/.

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Record low temperatures brought snow and ice to the lower half of the United States on Feb. 14, resulting in poor road conditions and power outages. (The Washington Post)

A severe cold snap has turned the central and southern parts of the country into an extension of the Arctic, with dangerously low temperatures not seen in decades and a blast of snow and ice which has shut down population centers in multiple states.

The excessive cold has sent energy demand skyrocketing. In Texas, 4.3 million customers were without electricity as of 8:45 p.m. Eastern, according to poweroutage.us, ahead of what was expected to be one of the state's coldest nights on record, with most areas falling to the single digits or lower.

At least one person, a homeless man in Harris County, had died from suspected exposure to the cold, the Weather Channel reported.

The mercury plummeted in the Lone Star State on Sunday night while it was blitzed by snow and ice, causing nearly impossible driving conditions and hundreds of vehicle accidents. Officials urged residents not to travel, as social media videos proliferated of cars and trucks sliding down roads out of control.

Houston's Bush Intercontinental and Hobby airports were closed, while all flights out of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport were also canceled Monday morning.

From January: The polar vortex is splitting in two, which may lead to weeks of wild winter weather

For the first time, the entire state of Texas had been placed under a winter storm warning Sunday. These warnings for hazardous amounts of ice and snow expanded Monday to cover all of Arkansas and most of Louisiana, Mississippi, and western and northern Alabama, while extending northeast through much of the Tennessee and Ohio valleys, and interior Northeast.

In the next 36 hours, more snow, sleet and ice is likely to fall from Oklahoma to New Hampshire, with a foot and a half of snow possible in Little Rock, Ark. and around 10 inches in Chicago.

In Texas, officials have warned that people may die of hypothermia and carbon monoxide poisoning from improper use of generators. The economic toll on agriculture could be staggering, with meteorologists in the insurance industry expecting this event, which should go through the end of the week, to end with a billion-dollar cost.

Houston's Intercontinental Airport dipped to 17 degrees early Monday, the coldest reading observed there since Dec. 23, 1989. Tuesday's morning low could be even more frigid - just 11 degrees forecast by the National Weather Service. The wind chill on Tuesday morning is expected to be just 1 degree.

"Dangerous, life and property threatening bitterly cold air will continue even as the precipitation ends," the Weather Service in Houston wrote early Monday.

Farther north, wind chills early Monday plunged as low as minus-40 and minus-50 in parts of Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado.

Widespread power outages

In Texas, the millions of power outages were tied to record-high demand, an electricity grid that is independent from surrounding states, low natural gas supplies, along with sky-high prices and reduced output from the state's numerous wind turbines,

Oncor, Texas' largest electricity utility, which serves 10 million customers, said Monday morning that electricity supply shortfalls are forcing much longer power outages than originally expected. "Outages due to this electric emergency could last for hours & we ask you to be prepared," it wrote.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) warns it will continue to implement mainly short-term, rolling blackouts across the state as energy demand exceeds supply.

Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company, the state's largest utility, also announced Monday it implemented intermittent controlled service interruptions - an unprecedented measure for the company. The blackouts were in effect for about two hours Monday but may return depending on the utility's capacity, spokesman Brian Alford said.

There have been three instances of rotating outages during an Energy Emergency Alert due to weather events in Texas, with the first occurring in 1989, according to ERCOT. Energy demand in the Lonestar State is expected to hit an all-time high.

"About 10,500 megawatts of customer load was shed at the highest point," ERCOT said in a news release, describing the step of cutting power to reduce demand on the grid. "This is enough power to serve approximately two million homes."

"Extreme weather conditions caused many generating units - across fuel types - to trip offline and become unavailable." About 30,000 megawatts of electricity generation has been lost due to the cold and snowy conditions, ERCOT stated. "Every grid operator and every electric company is fighting to restore power right now," said ERCOT president and CEO Bill Magness.

For Austin resident Cody Miller, 36, the extreme weather conditions have cause "chaos" in his part of Texas: Closed schools, unplowed streets, long stretches of power outages and shockingly cold temperatures.

Miller had been without power since about 1:30 a.m. Monday morning. By 10 a.m., the temperature in his East Austin home was hovering around 50 degrees with no clear direction from the power companies when it might be restored.

It was the second time in a week he had lost power after enduring a 10-hour outage on Thursday. "There's no real communication and 311 is pretty much down," said Miller, who works in the telecom industry.

The lifelong Texan said Monday's weather was like nothing he's seen before but noted he was fortunate that his fiancee is familiar with cold weather situations. "She's from Wisconsin, so we have someone here who has experienced it."

In parts of Dallas, residents lost both power and water due to frozen pipes.

Brandon Friedman, 42 who lives in northeastern Dallas, had been without power since roughly 2 a.m. and has no water despite leaving the faucets to run on drip.

Speaking to The Post from his car where he was charging his phone, Friedman described his driveway - blanketed in 5 inches of snow - and his regret at leaving one household item behind for the new residents when he moved from Virginia back to Dallas four years ago.

"I left our snow shovel hanging up in the garage in Virginia because we weren't going to need it in Texas," Friedman said.

Unlike Virginia where snowplows are "everywhere" at the sign of a first dusting, places in Texas don't have enough equipment. With the roads largely unplowed, state, city and county officials are telling people to stay home and stay off the roads, Friedman said.

"But people have no electricity. We're down to record-low temps and people can't get out and drive to shelter. ... It's unsettling," he said.

Adding to the frustration is that the two major companies that generate and distribute power in the area - Oncor and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT - had been telling residents since at least the morning that they would experience "rolling" blackouts lasting 15 to 45 minutes. Friedman said his neighborhood has been without power for at least eight hours (Oncor later issued an update to advise customers the blackout times would be "significantly" longer).

With extreme cold expected to last into Tuesday afternoon and people immobilized, Friedman fears residents will turn to dangerous alternatives to stay warm.

"When people can't leave their homes and don't have electricity and it's 7 degrees, they're going to use their ovens to heat," he said. "If you can start your oven to heat the house, you're going to have fires, you're going to have carbon monoxide issues."

"This has the potential to be catastrophic."

Extreme weather amid pandemic

Among other things, the cold weather has effectively frozen efforts to vaccinate people from the coronavirus.

As people who qualify for the vaccine have long-awaited their first or second dose, several cities and counties in Texas and Tennessee reported they had shut down their inoculation sites, canceling appointments. For some, it's unclear when those appointments will become available again. Texas officials said that shipments of the vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were put "on hold," due to the weather.

"We are not expecting deliveries to occur until at least Wednesday and expect an update later today," Douglas Loveday, spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, told The Post Monday. "Many local vaccine providers have postponed clinics since it is not safe for people to be out across much of Texas right now. Vaccination will resume as soon as it is safe."

Austin resident Shana Gallagher, 26, was scheduled to receive her first vaccine dose Monday in Waco, the closest appointment she could find. But when she canceled her assigned slot due to the weather, she was forced to give up her second dose appointment as well, she said. She qualified for the vaccine because of her autoimmune conditions.

"I spent a lot of time online clicking the refresh button to even get my first appointment," she said. "I probably spent three hours cumulatively across many days and weeks, and I finally got one. It's just going to be more of that again."

Like Gallagher, Dallas resident Deena Riley, 36, wished there was an improved system in place to reschedule appointments. When she goes back to book the appointments her parents, Gayle and Len McManus, both in their 60s, lost Monday due to the weather, she will be navigating an already convoluted process for two.

"There were vaccines allocated and booked this week, and I just don't understand why they can't say 'same time next week,'" Riley said.

Cold is unusually widespread

Punishing cold, ice and snow are also hitting Louisiana, including some of the same areas devastated by hurricanes just months ago. The exceptional cold is affecting about 30 states, with temperatures up to 50 degrees below normal.

According to Greg Carbin of the Weather Prediction Center in Maryland, the area currently covered by Winter Storm Warnings across the continental United States is larger than the land area of Alaska.

Some counties along the immediate Texas coastline near Houston had never been under a winter storm warning until this week. As a first wave of snow and ice pulls away Monday, record cold was being reinforced by northerly winds bringing dangerous wind chills.

After starting the day at minus-5 degrees, Oklahoma City was forecast to peak only around 4 degrees for an afternoon high. That's below the city's previous record lowtemperature for the date. It's also just 2 degrees away from Oklahoma City's all-time coldest high.

Kansas City reported a wind chill of minus-32 degrees, the most frigid measured there since 1989.

Dallas hit 5 degrees on Monday morning, its coldest reading since 1989. Likewise, Oklahoma City could drop to minus-7 Tuesday morning, also its coldest since 1989. In Dallas the average high on Feb. 14 is about 58 degrees, the average low 42 degrees.

The dynamic system was so extreme that it was the first time some meteorologists had predicted ocean-effect snow over bays of the Gulf of Mexico. "Of course, [I] don't have experience forecasting such things," wrote one Weather Service meteorologist in an online forecast discussion. "Some thundersleet/[snow] mixed in for fun - even at the beaches."

Thundersleet and thundersnow were observed throughout Houston and Galveston even along the beaches, with one Twitter user writing they had "seen more lightning in the last hour than [during] most of summer."

Significant thundersnow with cloud-to-ground lightning was also observed in Lake Charles, La., the same community ravaged by back-to-back hurricanes Laura and Delta less than six months ago.

In Houston, emergency officials issued a wireless emergency alert, warning that "life-threatening road conditions will spread through Harris County" while Art Acevedo, the chief of police, reported more than 100 accidents Sunday evening, including a 10-car pileup.

The cold weather is coming directly from the North Pole, via Siberia, following a disruption in the circulation of the polar vortex that occurred in January. It's helping to spark two major storm systems, the first of which dumped snow and ice on Sunday night and Monday morning, with the second on the way for Wednesday.

Oklahoma City measured about 5 to 8 inches of snow across the metro area, a bit more than what had fallen to the west in Amarillo, Tex.

Abilene, Tex., reported a general 8 to 11 inches, with drifts to 18 inches tall. San Angelo had 10 inches. Preliminary reports also suggest 4 to 6 inches fell in Dallas-Fort Worth. If the official total at the airport comes in over 5 inches, it will be the city's third-greatest snowstorm on record dating back to 1974.

Webcam images showed snow covering the beaches in Galveston. "We did get someone on the beach making a snow angel," said Kent Prochazka, lead meteorologist at the Houston Weather Service office. He said the impacts of a cold snap like this one, including the threat of burst pipes in many homes and businesses, "Are so rare here that there's a lot of preparation that needs to go on."

Donald Jones, a meteorologist at the Weather Service in Lake Charles, La., said that area is especially vulnerable to extreme cold due to the dual hurricanes last year. "A lot of residents are living in trailers or temporary housing," he said in an interview. "There were a lot of questions leading up to this event about pipes freezing because a lot of people now have these exposed pipes. There's a larger homeless population than there was before the storms."

Climate change connections

The central United States is currently the most unusually cold region on the planet, with temperatures reaching 50 degrees below average in some areas. However, the planet as a whole is still unusually mild, and 2020 was on par with the previous record for the warmest year on record.

As the climate has warmed due to human activities, cold snaps have become increasingly rare and less severe, while heat waves have become far more common and intense.

In the United States, winter is the fastest-warming season. In Dallas, the lowest temperature reached each year has increased by 7.9 degrees since 1970, according to the research and communications group Climate Central.

There is also some evidence showing that rapid climate change in the Arctic, which is melting sea ice, is helping to disrupt larger-scale weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, which may make incursions of polar air more likely and lead to extreme heat waves during the summer. This is still an area of active scientific research, however.

Jason Samenow and Jef Rouner contributed to this article.

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Deadly cold snap shuts down central U.S. Texas is ground zero.

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A severe cold snap has turned the central and southern parts of the country into an extension of the Arctic, with dangerously low temperatures not seen in decades and a blast of snow and ice which has shut down population centers in multiple states. The excessive cold has sent energy demand skyrocketing.