The weather cooperated by not being as bad as it could have been.
Most Houston-area residents woke up to two delights Tuesday morning: an unusually thick blanket of snow, and the power thankfully still on.
It was a sharp contrast to the last time the region saw measurable amounts of snowfall four years ago, when many awoke in frigid homes to outages that lasted days. Hundreds died statewide. So what’s different?
Since the infamous 2021 freeze, and Hurricane Beryl more recently, the Texas power grid operator and Houston’s local electric utilities have embarked upon a number of initiatives to harden grid infrastructure against extreme weather, bolster backup resources and improve their communications to the public.
A critical factor for the lack of mass outages this week, however, is the lack of more extreme winter weather. Though freezing, temperatures this time around were not nearly as cold for nearly as long as in 2021, easing pressure on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator for most of the state.
And, to the joy of many first-time sledders and snowball fighters in Houston, this week’s storm brought mostly snow and sleet instead of freezing rain. That’s fortuitous for CenterPoint Energy, the company that owns most of the power lines and poles in the Houston area, as freezing rain accumulating as ice on tree limbs and power lines could’ve triggered more severe outages if those conditions had occurred.
“Snowfall is just a much easier test than ice is for the distribution system. It’s not a true test of what Mother Nature can throw at us, so it shouldn’t make us complacent,” said Joshua Rhodes, a University of Texas at Austin research scientist specializing in the power grid.
Mighty nice of Mother Nature to just dump snow on us, and to let the temps get up above freezing even on Tuesday. I think we’re all stiff suffering from Winter Storm Uri PTSD. I wouldn’t bet on us always getting this lucky, but for this time around, I’ll take it. The bad news is that the death toll now stands at four, but one hopes that’s the end of it. Everything is more or less back to normal today, and we’ll have temps in the 60s over the weekend. How did you do this week?
Related Posts:
This entry was posted in Elsewhere in Houston and tagged blackouts, electricity, ERCOT, Freeze 2021, Houston, National Weather Service, snow, Texas. Bookmark the permalink.
