I’ve got no power but I do have Internet, so here’s a brief Beryl overview for you. We’re all fine and we do have some battery power to charge devices and keep the fridge and freezer cold, but expect things to be limited for the next couple of days.
Here’s storm coverage from TPR, Space City Weather, the Reform Austin. The main headline is that over 2 million CenterPoint customers in the Houston area are without power. Repair work will start in earnest once the storm is fully clear, so at the time of this writing there’s no estimate for how long it might take.
Mayor Whitmire is asking people to stay off the streets and shelter in place. There were a lot of downed tree branches in our neighborhood, though not as much as with the derecho. No uprooted trees that I saw, at least within a couple blocks of my house. I’m sure the earlier damage reduced the potential for this time. Maybe that will make recovery a little easier.
Finally, Greg Abbott had a Ted Cruz moment on his little junket to South Korea. Don’t hurry home, dude.
Hang in there, y’all. We will get through this.
Glad to hear y’all have power and are safe. It was a scary storm and I’m so sorry to read about all the damage and the lack of electricity. Thinking of the folks in Houston today.
Pretty sad that Centerpoint, after all of the talk about hardening the grid and preparedness, was completely unprepared for a relatively mild cat 1 hurricane. They will never learn or invest the necessary resources, and we will always suffer massive outages, ongoing for days and days. Welcome to the future.
Just what would you have CP do? If they spend more on hardening, electric rates go up and everyone complains. CP is a regulated utility that gets to recover its costs.
Since the business of Centerpoint is providing power to a huge city in a place prone to hurricanes, they could start by having transmission line standards such that the lines can withstand 100 or 120 mph winds. Repairs cost money too, we will pay either way.
Recently the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the obscene rip off that Gov. Abbott and the PUC perpetrated on Centerpoint and the public after the 2021 freeze was just fine, so Centerpoint is certainly feeling wounded. They are used to getting whatever they want from the Texas govenment, which has declared that Texas is wide open for looting by any Republican-friendly business entity. They never expected that Abbott and his pals might accidently shift a bunch of their loot to some Wall Street pals. So I feel real sorry for Centerpoint, and you should too.