I'm from Houston, TX, and I'll never forget the freeze. My daughter was 4 years old. We had gone to Walmart to get a few supplies, and a we were turning the corner in our neighborhood, my husband's phone rang. It was our neighbor who said he heard a loud noise in our house. When we opened the front door, water started pouring out of the house. The pipes had burst and the house was flooding. It's was about 2 or 3 inches of water. Our dog was home. It was about 12 degrees F outside, which is UNHEARD OF in SE Texas. We didn't have power for a few days but thank God my neighbor had a generator outside and he fed an extension cord over the fence into our back yard so we could have a little power. But our ceiling had caved in when the pipes burst and the draft from the attic was horrible. I hope to never have to go through that again. But Texas is not prepared for anything. Hurricane Beryl just came through here a few days ago and there are people still without power and it's the middle of July! It's hot as hell outside! I'm glad my family didn't lose power but so many of my coworkers and other family did. It's a mess out here.
I live just north of you, in Conroe. I remember that storm too well. I swear I have PTSD from that experience. The house we were renting at that time is now ours as of March of this year. That old girl is not insulated sufficiently for temperature extremes. She's got good bones, but needs a lot of love and repairs. I'm already trying to get a permit for a project to help with efficiency and temperature management. All of the improvement plans that I have written down were spurred by that 2021 storm. I want to be able to independently manage future outages and storms to maintain sanitation, communication, relative comfort, and nutrition. With so much politics involved in our power grid, I know we're on our own when our services fail. There are ways to make these moments more endurable, but it requires some changes in our house layout and equipment.
@@avaunamallett6176 I was in TX (Houston) some years ago in the dead of the summer. I was pleasantly surprised in that it was not nearly as bad (heatwise) as when I was in Florida or Arkansas. The temps were hot, but unlike the other two states around 6:30 in the evenings TX became very pleasant. We could sit out without that awful humidity.
@@calme-dx2dp lol I'm sorry which Houston did you go to?? I've lived here for 25+ years and the humidity during the summer is always ridiculous. Like 100% humidity. And the cooling off doesn't start until after sundown which is 830.... I used to go to summer camp in Arkansas, and although it was hot it was nothing compared to Houston's humidity and heat.
My daughter called me from Buda, texas ( outside san antonio) to ask me what to do to save her outside plants. I asked her why she was calling about cold weather. She said they were exspecting -17 degrees. I told her to forget her plants and save her house. That low tempreture is unheard of and houses are not designed for it.
Central Texas has multiple issues regarding extreme cold temps and winter storms. There is a lot of limestone, in particular west of I-35 (N/S highway), which prevents most water, sewer lines and power lines from being buried deeply, or buried at all, in the case of many of the power lines that stretch across the state. Deep freezes haven't been a big enough issue, historically speaking, to undergo the huge expense of digging deep into the limestone (and likely hitting a spring, which is another issue). Also, since a lot of our power lines are exposed to the elements, an ice storm can be particularly bad, as many of our trees here are live oaks, which are semi-decidious - meaning that they don't drop their leaves until early Spring. Even trace amounts of ice can be devastating to a live oak as the added weight can absolutely destroy even the largest oaks. Jan/Feb 2023 brought as much as .75" of ice, followed by winds that made it look like a winter hurricane came through. Austin lost 1/3 of its tree canopy and tree debris was still being picked up 4 months after the storm. Our winters the past few years have had some pretty ferocious storms. Snow, ice and deep cold that freezes pipes inside walls that were designed to keep the cold IN not out.
I have been waiting so long for you to react to this! I’m from Fort Worth and let me tell you, this video doesn’t do it justice. It’s was a terrible time. No power, no water for days. Luckily I had my roommate so I wasn’t alone but my 93 year grandmother was also stuck at her home alone, no power. We almost lost her as she developed pneumonia along with the dehydration and lack of food. Thank you for reacting to this. It became a core memory for me and I’m sure many others.
Yeah this time was traumatic. It flared my pain and anxiety disorder badly the entire time and even days after. I'm sorry y'all had to worry about your grandma! I hope she's ok now
My husband and I were part of "Snovid 2021." We lost power and water for 4 days. We went and gathered snow to be able to use our toilet. I've never been that cold in my life. Luckily, I keep all quilts and blankets, so we were able to stay warm that way. But we also had 3 layers of clothes on. I never want to go through that again.
Hi there, I’m from the Northern US. I hope you don’t go through that again either, but given how crazy weather is these days, here are some suggestions. If you get cold weather warnings, always get more food than you think you’ll need, and I’d recommend getting a gallon or two of water just in case. Have an emergency blanket or two on hand. If the power goes out, have everyone stay in the same room and if you have sources of heat that don’t require a plug in bring it into the room and huddle together. Leave your water dripping too. If you have to melt snow do so with a heater, don’t try to melt it by shaking a container around or any way that will make you sweat as it then makes it more likely for you to freeze to death. Don’t drive unless you have to, but if you have to drive, go slow, and if you skid turn in the opposite direction. If you have a 4 wheel drive car/truck use that over front wheel. Most important, stay calm. I know it’s a bit late and hopefully you never have to use this, but I hope you can copy this and keep it for emergencies.
@@MsMorriit happens here periodically. Nothing this drastic but texas doesnt have those things that make winter storms. Like during the superbowl here in the DFW area. They brought in snow plows from oklahoma as we never need it. But great advice. Grew up in north dakota so i would help those around me through the years to manage the mess.
@@aaronburdon221 they have the infrastructure and equipment up there to deal with it. We don't down here. IF someone up there got stuck with no power or heat or water in the cold, they'd be just as f'ed as we were.
My cousin was one of the people that was in that pile up. She’s a nurse. Was on her way to work. She didn’t know it at the time but she was 2 months pregnant. She ended up lodged under an 18 wheeler. She had to escape the car and jump the concrete barrier in the median before the car behind her slammed into her own car which lodged it even further under the 18 wheeler. She probably would’ve died had she not gotten out.
@@jennaB209 my Nextdoor neighbor was a nurse at JPS and was also in the wreak. I hope your cousin and family are doing great now. Yesterday, I was on the same expressway about 10 miles north of where the wreak was. There was a wreck on that part i35 S it took me a hour to drive 7 miles .. a semi had been peeled opened lengthways and caught fire.. I couldn’t tell about the other cars involved.. I always think of all those people any time I pass there.
Im in Houston, and after the 3rd day My apartment had dipped below freezing and was colder on the inside than on the outdoors. On the 2nd day of below freezing temps in my apartment I finally had to go to a shelter for heat and food. Im originally from the north east and experienced several major snow storms, so I knew basic winter survival, but quickly realized how much states with winter weather have a winter culture, with plenty of winter weather resources easily available (clothes, accessories for handling ice, portable kerosine heaters, etc) that i took for granted. Unfortunately most of my neighbors had never seen snow before, or experience below freezing temps for more than a few hours, let alone days. It was bad
@marywood2865 with humidity temps got above 100 on my side of the city. Houston does a pretty good job of providing cooling centers for the elderly and sick. Inspite of this there were a lot of heat related hospitalizations, and a few deaths.
@@tyreedillard If Texas was connected to neighboring states for electricity (power grid) maybe nobody would have died, since the power might have come back on sooner. Sounds like prioritizing BS over lives.
What was unique about this situation was that the entire state (which is HUGE) had sub-freezing temperatures at the same time. I've never known for the whole state to be freezing. It's very unusual for south Texas to experience freezing temps. So the electrical grid was stressed to the limit. We were very lucky not to lose power. For 11 days, we were on edge, wondering if and when we'd lose power. The pipes in our master bath froze, but by some miracle, my husband went under the house and found a valve that shut off the water only in the master bath. So we were able to use water in the rest of the house. We got about as lucky as we could possibly have been. So many others were not so fortunate.
Not just the grid being stressed. Winter is when most of the power plants do maintenance, so several of them weren't working. And then when the grid started to collapse it just dominoed. Now what I found out from my friend who is an electrician is that power plants need to have a certain level of power to be able to restart. We were actually hours away from a large number of our plants being unable to do so. In other states they are on one of the two national grids, so they wouldn't have this issue. But not Texas. Nope, we have to be so independent so the federal government can't require Texas power plants to meet national standards.
@@KellyDVance well if that's the case they need to do maintenance in spring or fall when extreme temps are less likely lol. At least till 2029 I think it is that we are joining other grids
@@peachxtaehyung we aren't joining other grids. The Republican legislature won't do it. As for Spring or Autumn, most of the state is already getting hot by mid-Spring and staying hot till late October/early November. The power plants aren't going to change their schedule due to rare weather events. It isn't practical.
@@KellyDVance how do you know though? I haven't seen any confirmation of not doing it. But the news reported that they're saying they're joining Louisiana and also I think either el paso or new mexico
Fort Worth here. That video doesn’t really do it Justice. It was baaad! I remember waking up and there was no power. It was something like -18 degrees Celsius outside. I had my fire place going but definitely didn’t have enough wood for a week. Even with the fire place going, my place was freezing. I was contemplating what furniture to cut up when the weather let up a bit and I saw a window and made a very scary drive to my friends house who had power. It was normally 50 minutes away, but took over 3 hours because of the road conditions. I’m also a teacher so we coordinate getting blankets n food to some of students in need. Some were really bad off. That all happened before the second storm hit, which really shut everything down. My place didn’t have power for a week, water for 2 weeks. Honestly, I got off pretty easy compared to many others. All in all, good times 😔
The issue is that Texas was utterly unprepared for it, because it's so uncommon there. Most of the houses in Texas don't really have proper heating systems, so they rely on electricity for their heat, which is, in a word, dumb. In the Midwest, for example, everyone *knows* that it's normal for a winter storm to knock out power for a few hours (locally, because tree limbs fall on the lines all over the place, and it takes a day or so to get them all cleared and repaired), but basically all houses have gas heat (piped natural gas if you live in a municipality, or a tank of propane or LNG if you live out in the countryside), so folks still have heat, *and* we have closets full of winter clothing, and a bunch of spare blankets and whatnot. (Heck, most people have an old blanket in their car trunk.) Texans have none of that. Up here, the entire regional power grid doesn't go down, because the grid is maintained with winter storms in mind, because we have a couple of them nearly every year, sometimes more, so the power company has people who know what to do. The Texas grid operators had no practical experience with winter storms, and some of their power plants weren't even designed to operate at sub-zero temperatures, which would be unthinkable up here. Everyone in the Midwest has at least some idea how to drive on snow, because even the kids who just got their licenses, have been *walking* on snow for years, so the physics are at least a little intuitive; and most adult drivers have driven on ice and snow many times, so they know what they're getting into. Whereas, many Texans had never seen snow before much less tried to drive on it; their instincts would have been leading them to treat it like asphalt, which is exactly wrong, and when that inevitably goes badly, they're going to mostly respond by going into a panic and doing random things very suddenly, which is even worse. Every municipality in the north has a fleet of snowplows and salt trucks, and the state has them for the highways. Texas does not. Everyone up here has seen the safety videos about not running a car inside a closed garage because of carbon monoxide, they show them in middle school and high school health classes. Who the heck puts in water mains so close to the surface that they're going to freeze the first time there's a mere week of winter weather? And so on and so forth.
Oklahoma is much more prepared than Texas for the cold, snow, and ice. The people there struggled also, but not nearly as much. I live in a newer house. We lost power for maybe 2 or 3 hours. Older neighborhoods suffered quite a bit. The biggest difference is that my water and power utilities are buried in the ground. The falling tree branches did not fall on and break the power lines, and our water lines were not exposed to the extreme cold air, and we knew to have the water dripping on the interior faucets before the cold came. I had a friend at work who had to live in a hotel for a month. He has no power for 3 weeks and had to pay for a plumber to replace all of his water lines for his house.
Dallas here. I was comparatively lucky. I had about a week's worth of food stocked up (though not planned, I have to admit; so I was *really* lucky). I had rotating blackouts: 4 hrs with power, 7 hrs without. So I cooked Hamburger Helper all that week until the ice melted. Temps in my place never got below 57F / 14 C; and even got warmed back up to 72F / 22C before power shut off. This went on for about two or three days, then permanent restoration. I'm still not embarrassed to complain though, because ERCOT was so.. Ok,.I'll say it...Fucked Up with Sweethart Good-Ole Boy'ism that they treated the power system like a mere cash cow, not a public service. ERCOT=Electricity Reliability Council of Texas
@@cwalokie9559 Losing power for 2-3 hours is a very normal thing that happens when winter storms hit. Building a grid so robust that that doesn't happen, would be cost-prohibitive. I know some people who can't stand to be without power for that long, typically because they are deeply addicted to television and can't stand for it to ever be turned off even for a few minutes. (When the power goes out in the Midwest, we still have heat, because that runs on natural gas.) People like that own generators. And yes, this is absolutely real: I personally know multiple people who own a generator specifically so they can keep the television on during power outages. The addictiveness of television is one of several reasons I don't want it in my house.
Im in DFW. I remember our excitement for snow turning into a 4 day struggle to keep our family warm. We had no power or gas. We had no running water which resulted in 30+ breaks in the pipes. The toilet water even froze. It was an extremely stressful time, the whole family was barricaded in a single room and I was sleep deprived because I was constantly checking on the kids (and cat) and making sure they were warm enough. We have an emergency kit that is much better suited for winter emergencies now but I still get anxiety when I see snow in the forecast.
How is that relevant to this? The electric grid is run by a private company not elected officials. It’s just a cheap shot to win political points to bring it up.
Southern states rarely have snow/ice, and when they do, they're not as experienced in clearing the roads. This example was horrible. Also take a look at Atlanta Snowmageddon of 2014. Snow/ice started mid-morning, after the schools were in session and everyone was at work. Once it started, it didn't stop, and roads became impassable because the traffic wouldn't allow plow trucks to help. People spent the night in their cars on the interstates, completely stuck. Totaled about 2.5 inches. That's all to shut down a major city.
Native Minnesotan here who experienced Snowmageddon in Atlanta. It was no joke, and there was more involved than just snow. Where I work at the Cumberland Mall and for many miles around, it was a glare ice surface with powder snow on top. The snow melted and refroze, and that was not easy to navigate on even on a level surface, and my own car slid a few times while I was driving around trying to find a way out of the area. I failed, and ended up staying the night in my office. In a contest between humans and ice, ice ALWAYS wins.
The roads were horrific, made worse because many school systems didn't cancel classes. So kids were brought to school only for parents to be called afterward to pick them up. I'd stayed at my parent's place the night before. Had to go pick up niece and nephew bc the school tried to send them all home on the bus - which slid off into a ditch before making it out of the school parking lot. Then went to pick up two adult family members who were stranded at work. I was only able to pick them up bc I had all-wheel drive. I then made a 3.5 hour trip to work (which should have been 70 mins). It was all hands on deck and I remained at work (hospital) for days. But those of us living in Georgia in 1993 remember up to 3 feet of snow, drifts to 6-7 feet. Sounds managable unless you're in a place not prepared for it. We were without power for a full week, without running water for far longer. We were on a dead end road with some 60 downed trees across the road between us and any help.
I lived east of Dallas at the time this storm hit. It truly was insane. Our state is used to heat. Everything here is built for heat and hurricanes, not cold. I was raised in South East Texas. I had never even seen snow that deep in person before. I was one of the lucky ones, we had power and water the whole time and because I grew up on the coast I had prepared like it was a hurricane. That said, we stayed home and my neighborhood jumped to and started helping each other. Since I had power, I let people charge their phones. Someone else was bringing around firewood to those who needed it, others brought food and water to those in need. I had a plan just in case my house lost power (6 people). It was terrifying knowing that some family members, not at my house, needed power for cpaps and they had no power. They were too far away to get to my house.
Hi, I’m from San Angelo, Texas & -1 in 2021, the deep freeze, snowmageddon was horrible. Hotels were full, but because of our animals we decided to ride the storm out. I had just gotten over Covid & returned to work only to be sent home due to the approaching storm. Prior to losing power I had a roast in the oven, my dishwasher running & a load of laundry in the washer. Needless to say the roast had to be thrown away, I manually had to empty water from my dishwasher & washing machine to avoid stale water smells. Our living room became our fortress & our fireplace our only source of heat. We were on our last log when our power was restored & my husband contemplated using planks from our privacy fence if power was not restored. Our fireplace not only kept us warm, it was also our stove. My husband & son took shifts to keep the fire going. I am glad I collect quilts because we used every one we had & lived in many layers of clothing during the week without power. This is not something we would have ever been prepared for, it would have never crossed our minds that something like this would happen. Yes, it had been 100 years since the last deep freeze but had no idea it could get as bad as it got. Although we will probably never live to see this happen again, nor will our children or grandchildren, we made sure to purchase a generator, & changed our wood burning fireplace to gas. Whether we experience another outage due to a freeze or high temps we will be prepared as will many Texans across the state. What I learned is that we are resilient, & as neighbors we came together helping each other. We did manage to drive a very treacherous drive to the grocery to find soup but not much of anything else. A treacherous drive to McDonald’s where my husband & son sat in line for an hour to get cheeseburgers made it home safely but had a false hope as they saw houses with power & others without. Yes, 4 houses down from us & the next block had power but we did not, it was bittersweet, we were on the wrong side of the grid, something I never imagined was possible. I had friends who lost loved ones, livestock & other animals. When the snow started to melt we found birds who perished. We had running water but did not use, instead we thankfully had plenty of bottled water that actually froze sitting on our counters, it was truly colder inside our home than outside. While we could not use our bedrooms I was awestruck when I sat on the rock that is my memory foam mattress, yes, it was frozen solid. While our pipes did not freeze our daughter returned to her home to find burst pipes. The only way to charge our cell phones was in our car & that is when we saw elderly neighbors getting in their cars to stay warm. Night looked like day because of the snow & we lost track of time, hard to fathom. To say that Texans are not resilient, after this ordeal, is an understatement, we took care of each other & our neighbors & as a family became closer. The pictures we were able to take are memories we will never forget. Thank you for taking an interest in what happened here.
My uncle and grampa were in that 100+ vehicle pile up on I35W in Fort Worth. When the bottom falls out of the temperature here, we get black ice which looks like dry road.
I'm from Sherman Oaks, CA, been living in TX for nearly 7 years. This was unlike anything I ever experienced in my life!! Never lost power, but no water for weeks because the pipes in my 1920s garage apartment burst!! ❄️
Houston, Texas. The governing body in Texas refuses to fortify the grid, still. One of our senators in Washington decided it was too cold in Texas, so he flew his family, and himself to Cancun. Once news of his trip made headlines, he flew himself back to Texas. He then claimed he flew his family there, and just went along to help them get “settled in.” That didn’t sit well with freezing Texans. We still refer to him as “Senator of Cancun.” 😡😞
@@MelNel5 He didn't go off to an trip Cancun he was chaperoning a bunch of his children and Friends on their Mexican trip that was planned in advance and was already there. He had to wait in Mexico until another parent could take his place. It was all rather boring and made to be bigger than it was. The job he had in Washington he wasn't really needed. But he went back to texas. To be honest the job he had at the time no one needed his help so his being in Texas didn't make any difference. The news likes to sensationalize things.
I live in Austin and my apartment was hit pretty hard during the Icepocolypse of 2021. The tough part about it was that there was so much ice, you couldn't drive anywhere for about 6 days (for me, with the hills and such). Then it snowed and the ground was covered about 12 inches of snow, which didn't melt for about 5 days. This is the worst winter storm I've seen in Texas in my 54 years here. We're used to cold spells for about 2 or 3 days at most, then it gets warm again. And nothing here is really built for freezing temperatures, so we just stay home for a day or two and all is well. But this one lasted 7 days and we were screwed. My electricity held up for the first two days, but the huge oak trees all throughout the complex were iced over and started breaking off huge branches onto cars and fences and blocked all access for emergency vehicles, which was kind of scary. It was dropping down to 11 degrees at night. My heat was electric, so when that went out it got down to about 25 degrees in parts of my house. I was sitting at my kitchen table admiring the icicles that had formed on the windows, when I realized they were actually on the inside! Mostly it was just scary because it's just me and my cat. The neighbors were close by, but the nights were long and eerily quiet and dark. I mostly read books by candlelight. I was really lucky that I have a gas stove in the kitchen, so I could cook some things and boil water. When the electricity went out, it was out for 5 days, so no internet, lights, and we had to save phone/texting for emergencies since we couldn't recharge anything. They told us to expect rolling blackouts, where electricity would go out for a few hours, then come back on, but for most of us in Austin, when it went out, it was out for days and days. I was doing all right, but then the pipes froze and I went 2 days without water. We had bottled water, and then melted snow to flush toilets before the ice melted enough to drive to a hotel. It was getting pretty medieval. Even at the hotel, the water pressure was really low, so you couldn't really take a shower. I was there for 8 days as they made repairs to my apartment and got the electricity and water back on, mostly. It took them 8 weeks to get water running again in my kitchen, which really sucked. I was one of the lucky ones, though, as many people died or their houses burned or were flooded. Lots of people's pipes would freeze, which expanded them and cracked them, so when the ice melted, there was a lot of flood damage to homes. I thought the sovereign immunity that the Texas Supreme Court gave Ercot was bullshit. And I don't think they've done anything to improve the grid to prepare for another event. My apartment hasn't changed anything (provided better insulation, windows, or even carbon monoxide alarms), though they did raise our rents by 40% the following year to pay for all the damages costs, or so they said.
Dallas Texan here 🙋🏻♀️I remember feeling a multitude of emotions throughout that time. The first day or two of the snow fall, I remember being in awe of the sheer amount of snow we got. It was like real snow, not “Texas snow” that we normally get, which is sleet, shlushy “snow” and then it al turns to ice 😂 Once things started getting worse I remember feeling nervous, even scared to leave my apartment. I refused to go back to work until most of the roads were cleared up. My boss made me use PTO for that 🙃 I also felt a tremendous amount of guilt because my roommate and I never once lost power or our water access. We lived right next to a bunch a medical centers and hospitals so we shared their energy grid, which are always labeled as “essential”. I would lay in my bed, all snug and warm, watching the chaos unfold online and just feel so guilty that I’m perfectly warm and safe while others, even my family, who lived just a few miles away from me, had no power. I’m so glad to see you covering this. Many need to realize just how devastating this was for our state. So many ppl on TikTok were making fun of us saying we were all being dramatic about “a little bit of snow”. The national news sources back then horrifically downplayed the total of fatalities from this event. I was FURIOUS.
the road I live on got luck with power. It never even flickered. It's not part of an essential line. Just really lucky. The water pumps for our little town finally failed/froze up after day 5, so lost water. But our family (myself, my grandparents and my dad, three different houses on the same stretch of land) properly prepared for it. We wrapped pipes exposed to air. We filled a lot of buckets with water to drink and use, etc. We wrap the pipes every single year no matter what. We don't want to deal with burst pipes. Anyway, yeah, we got very lucky on the power. Even more lucky that the internet connection was on a system that never failed either, so I had internet the entire time.
A lot of people who did use gas still lost all power because the gas lines froze. Lines in Texas aren't buried very deep because it had never frozen for that long as it did that year. We were really lucky in that we did not lose power for a long time. But since we live at the bottom of a hill, we couldn't get out of our neighborhood unless we went on foot. And even if the grocery stores were open, we didn't want to risk walking there. Not many people have carbon monoxide detectors. We installed them after this freeze. We also installed solar and batteries, just in case this ever happened again.
And even in Houston, they STILL can't get funding to start burying the electrical lines, so every single time tropical weather hits, there they go again. In Austin, I wasn't *supposed* to be on blackouts due to proximity to a fire station. And we weren't. It was just the frozen trees kept falling on the lines.
I live in southeast Texas, right in between Houston and Galveston Island. It was bad here too. In my area, I believe it got down to around 12°F (-11.11°C) that first night, and we got more snow than southeast Texas had ever seen in this area. I think our area specifically, got around 2-3 inches of snow, which is a crazy amount for us because me personally, I have only ever seen snow in this area two other times in my life, and those two times it didn't even cover the ground and was mostly just ice, but during the 2021 deep freeze that shit was actual soft, fluffy snow that completely covered the ground a few inches high. I can't remember exactly how long we were without electricity, but I think it was 3 days. Others were out for much longer. The power plants began with rolling blackouts to try and ease the strain on the power grids. They began that first night by shutting off electricity in every home in certain areas for a few hours, and then they would turn them back on and turn electricity off in a different areas. They continued that throughout the night, but it didn't help because the power grids failed anyway, which then left everyone without electricity. Even though my family went without electricity for a few days, which was extremely frustrating having to be so cold as well as losing all the food in our fridge, we still got lucky that we didn't have any busted water pipes or a roof cave in or anything like that. So many others in my area didn't get as lucky as we did.
As a Texan, I can only remember twice it had really snowed at all for me in the 20 years I've lived here before this storm. And those were practically nothing compared to this. I had no idea what was about to happen. I was thankful I didn't have to leave my apartment the entire time. My mom's house ended up flooded because her pipes burst in the attick, and a bedroom ceiling collapsed. Apparently, a raccoon had taken shelter up there, so when the ceiling fell, so did he. She and her cat ended up living with me in my 1 bedroom apartment for 10 months.
Racoon 😮! San Antonio here. I remember the 80s snowstorm our patio cover caved in, and we (the kids) started screaming 😂 I noticed that we changed our roof designs after that from flat with rocks to high and pointed, lol
I am crying while watching this. Living through it was awful. I'm just north of Dallas. We didn't have rolling blackouts at my house. As soon as the power went out in the middle of the night, my husband turned on the gas fireplace. We had it running the whole time. The power would come on for about 20 minutes in the middle of the night. That's it. We were cooking in our fireplace. Our neighbors ran an extension cord from their truck to our house so we could charge phones to keep in touch with family. My family in the Austin area were without water for days. Luckily, because we stayed home and kept tabs on our pipes, we did good there. Several of our neighbors had burst pipes and even gas leaks. Every time we get below freezing or our temps get over 100, I fear we're going to go through it again.
First thing we did was get a generator. Now we always keep essentials. Batteries etc. while it was bad, I still don't want to be without power during Texas heat
I also live in DFW. Our homes in Texas are built to withstand the heat and milder winters. Not a full blizzard. Windows cracked in many homes, including mine. I was lucky my water heater was over my garage, and I had a small leak. Others’ homes were flooded when their water heaters broke. It was really terrible. ERCOT has had a lot to answer for in the following years.
@@eowyn8340 Yes but common sense also dictates that when there's going to be an uncommon freeze you prepare for it personally. I have always lived in Texas and we drained water the water heater and all the water lines to the house and winterized everything as much as we could. Had buckets and barrels with water. Doubled check the heating and topped everything up. Our house always has food in the pantry because my grandparents lived through the dust bowl. Got the cold weather emergency sleeping bags out. My parents have always lived by the rules of you cannot trust electricity and never heat your house with such an unreliable source. The freeze was a bit boring when you prepare for it. My work had one of the only not frozen toilets in the area so I ended up on bathroom duty. Melting snow and ice for flushing the toilet. Because everybody came by. Then doing wellness checks and shoveling snow for the elderly. Non of us was actually doing our normal jobs. I spent so much time outside.
My parents down south had a pipe burst in the garage. Of course, everywhere it took WEEKS to get so many repairs even scheduled. In the meantime, one of my uncles went and found a suitable hose at Auto Zone or something and rigged it up to work temporarily. Good ol' country boy engineer!
I worked for one of the city’s utilities a month afterward. The people working there told their higher ups what they need to do to keep water flowing but they were ignored, the water issues were easily avoidable.
One of the things that wasn’t mentioned in the video was that people froze to death. Not just homeless people but also people in their homes with no fireplace or heat source. The rolling blackouts caused electricity in my area to only come on for a few minutes to a few hours. Definitely not long enough to heat a home. Many people I know do not have proper winter jackets or clothes. Good thing my family went on vacation to Seattle during the winter a few yrs prior, so we had proper winter clothes. We also had a fireplace and plenty of canned food bc since 2020 my mom has been preparing for a potential ongoing food shortage. We even have a backup freezer for extra frozen food too. We were more fortunate than most. Our pipes didn’t freeze either bc we found a way to keep them warm.
Texas is not used to such extreme cold weather. I will bet most Texans have ever felt temperatures well below freezing for more than a couple of days. It's just like the UK is not used to extreme heat and so many people died due to that heat several years ago. The UK did not require that every home get air con because it is not that common to heat up that much. Once temperatures get that low pipes freeze and everything becomes brittle and somethings just stop working. Since it was the first time ever that cold, there was noting to really do. Black ice cased that huge accident and nothing can be done with black ice. Just stay home because you cannot see it at all. And once you hit that ice at any speed, you will lose control of your car, truck or van. It is the scariest thing about driving in the winter. Snow is bad but black ice is deadly I grew up in NY State I am glad I did because the state gets both extremely hot and cold temperatures. Getting both extremes very often teaches you how to survive and handle both hot and cold weather.
You are correct. I live in south Tx and I have never been that cold in my entire life. I've been around snow and ice in north Tx but there was always a nice warm house to go back into. I didn't even know about simple stuff like hanging a blanket over the window.
@@ESUSAMEXi grew up in north dakota. We got the same. We would reach 100°f for a couple weeks now and then. High humidity. Then winter every year 2 weeks never getting above 0°F. In texas now. Was able to help those around me. Plus when it came to going to work i could get there when no one else could. Granted 1.5 hours to go 30 miles, i could still get there.
Texen here. I line fairly south in the state. And this is out of the ordinary. We are use to tripical storms not freezes. It just does NOT get that cold here. I have seen it really snow only twice. Only stuck on the ground once. Its humid and HOT here. 60 degrees is what our cold here.
Had to boil snow for water but got off light compared to my mom who lost water and power. She was so listless when I talked to her, I convinced her to start a fire in her wood-burning stove with a leaky pipe because warmth was a bit more important. She cracked her window to let the smoke out, but had asthma problems for several weeks after. You better believe she had that wood-burning stove fixed by the next winter. Also, OMG how did I miss that the Hilton fire was during the freeze?
I'm in north TX. This video fails to talk about the 3-6 FEET of snow that fell between the two winter storms during the polar vortex. We called it the Snowmagedon of 2021! Our temperature did get down to -9°F and the wind chill was around -21°F. My family's house was lucky to be on the same electrical grid as one of our city's hospitals, so we only lost power for 2 hours before it was up and running again, and I had already cooked a big pot of chilli and a pot of beef stew. Both of which made 5 meals for my family of 5( I know, but for some reason, I just can't seem to make small batches of food). When the power went out, I pulled out over 20 blankets from all over the house, and the kids were like, "Where did you get all of them?" I said, "What? Do you think my crochet hooks are just for decoration? " Let's just say everyone (human and pets) was able to stay warm that week due to Nana's hobbies of cooking and crafting!
Hi! From Austin, Texas here. I was living in a very run down apartment when this happened. I was without power for 7 days and out of water for 8. We couldn't get out of complex parking lot because it was a solid sheet of ice and no one (not even jacked up jeeps) could get traction. Me and my neighbor trudged over a mile to a shopping complex in hopes that something was open. About the 4th day, a little mom and pop Mexican restaurant across the street broke out their grills and we were able to get hot food. I had been eating vegetables out of a can for days. At one point it was 36 degrees in my apartment. There was quite literally nothing to do except sleep and read. Me and my cats kept each other warm under every single blanket I owned. I shoved towels in every crack of every door and every window in desperation. The apartment building next to mine caught fire due to a candle. It was one of the craziest things I've ever been through. . Meanwhile, our senator hopped on a plane to Mexico with his family....people died...Fast forward a year later and we had another mini-freeze. I was out of power for days. Texas needs to drop its ego and get off its own power grid
My mother died during the "Texas Ice Age." She slipped on the ice at work on Thursday morning, hitting her head on a metal handrail and the concrete when she fell. I picked her up from the ER where every room was full of people with head injuries. They checked her out and said she was OK, but apparently she had a slow bleed. She collapsed at work that next Monday and was gone.😭
I remember that week well. It was just a couple of months after my husband died, so I was all alone in our house. Our stove is electric, so that didn't work. I have a small, gas powered generator, but it provided only enough power to maybe charge my cell phone. It tripped when I hooked up the coffee maker or portable stove, so I pulled the outdoor grill up close to the house and opened the window to heat up something. That didn't work well either, but it was better than nothing. There were short periods of power, so during those times I fixed some food and made a huge cup of coffee and filled up a large Yeti cup, just so I could drink something hot. Ice froze around my door, so I had a hard time opening it. When I did, my sidewalk and driveway were solid ice. Didn't even want to attempt to go anywhere. I had a couple of bags of sand, which I did sprinkle around the front of the house, and it helped a little. It was honestly miserable and I was kind of scared. And yes, I did let the water drip constantly for a couple of days. No pipes burst, thankfully, and my town's water stayed clean.
In San Antonio the rolling black outs were so bad. We literally had no power for 8-10 hours and then our power would turn on for a couple of hours then shut off again. We tried to charge everything we could when we had power, and we all slept in one bedroom covered in every blanket we had in our home. We also slept in so many layers of sweaters, sweat pants, socks, beanies and gloves. I hope & pray that we NEVER experience that ever again.
I am right outside of Houston, Tx. My youngest son was 3 months old and my other two were 4 and 8….it was an adventure to say the least. I got all the blankets in my house and covered all doors and windows to insulate. It was 28 degrees INSIDE my home before all was said and done. I used candles and terracotta pots flipped upside down to warm us up as much as possible; it works surprisingly well if you have more than one. I was born and raised here..I don’t do cold weather. I’d prefer our almost 120 degree summers daily over ever going through that again.
The irony of reliving this whilst now dealing with the aftermath of hurricane Beryl and once again, lack of preparedness and power outages that are for some people going to last the entire week+ in 100F weather. This ice/snow event was awful. I was with my parents who were in their late 70s, and as a child, there is no worse feeling than seeing your parents huddled together for warmth with every single blanket in the house just trying to survive. Unlike heat related events, you can't just walk outside and find a bit of relief because you'll die out there, and you'll die inside. I remember starting the day feeling so giddy and happy because we never get snow, and then next thing you know, everyone is fighting for their lives to find power, to find gas, to stay warm, to make sure people don't die in garages and from fumes from the few that did have generators. We had to relocate to our car and just sit in the drive with the heater on and take small shifts because you also didn't want to run out of gas in case of who knows what. My aunt eventually got power so we went for an hour long drive to get there with people sliding on and off the road, only for her power to fail at 4 am in the morning. It was miserable, and now dealing with power issues all over again with hurricane Beryl and people are so hot and miserable, it's just an annoyance like no other and its no joke because these are life threatening things. People die needlessly in these situations, and my heart always goes out to those infirmed or with disabilities who struggle.
In our home, we didn't have an issue with drinking water because we already had a lot of bottled water in the house. We pulled our charcoal grill to the driveway and used that for breakfast & dinner. We didn't lose much food because our power didn't go off in the beginning when everybody else's did, so our deep freezer in the cold garage was somewhat ok, as long as we didn't repeatedly open it. We just pulled out what was needed for that day. My family wasn't in too bad a shape during this time since we are from Chicago, and used to some of the winter precautions that we were usually bombarded with every winter on the news while living in Chicago.
Houston here. We were extremely lucky and only lost power for 2 hours during this storm. We had sheets and blankets up over windows to try and help insulate. We usually only see a few days in winter that warrant a hard freeze warning and they don't stick around. Fast forward to now, we just just went through the opposite disaster. Cat 1 Hurricane Beryl took caused power outages for nearly 3 million customers and there's a lot still waiting for restoration in 100+ degree temps. We were out for 6 days.
I live in Dfw, Texas and was blessed. We had rolling blackouts at my house for 3 days. It was approximately 45 min of electricity and 30 min of blackout. Only one pipe burst. However, my sister's house flooded and no electricity for 5 days. Poor sis, I offerred for her to come but the roads were so bad it was unsafe.
I live in the DFW area too. I was so blessed that my house never lost power once. Our house was packed with family/friends and pets because we were one of the only people that had power the whole time. They were all freezing and didn’t have fires or water so they braved the roads and came to my house. I love the cold but I hope we never have to deal with that again. I felt so bad for all the Texans. Glad your house didn’t have much damage!!
I’m in DFW area. We had two frozen pipes, one of which burst. Power started going out around 1:30am on Monday. By Tuesday morning, it was 42 degrees Fahrenheit on the SECOND floor of our house. It was even colder on the first floor. I’ve lived in northern states and have never been so scared as I was by this storm. Our houses aren’t built for weather like this. We have pipes on exterior walls and they aren’t buried that deeply in the ground. So water mains were breaking in the area too.
Texas does get snow and cold winters occasionally, but 2021 was accompanied by freezing and sub freezing temps rarely encountered down here. It’s something I’ve only seen less than a handful of times in 40 years. The last time we got nearly as cold was 2011 when Dallas hosted the Super Bowl.
New Braunfels, Texas here! We are South Central Texas and it was a lovely time in the snow. We never lost power but we had no water for 9 days! We have a four wheel drive truck and had large containers that we filled up. It was quite an adventure! I wouldn’t mind it happening again! I know I’m a very different perspective than big city Texas!
The raw videos from that Interstate 35 pileup in Ft Worth are horrific. There is a rise in the highway before the point of the pileup making it virtually invisible to approaching motorists and operators of tractor trailers. Many were traveling well above speeds appropriate for the road conditions and became unstoppable upon reaching the ice. It was sickening the see the speed and violence of the collisions knowing people were being killed.
Thank you for reacting to this 🙏🏾. I live in Houston and was without power and water for 4 days during the freeze. It was about 20 degrees in my apartment but the great thing about Houstonians is we band together through crazy situations. The infrastructure is still outdated. The majority of the city was without power for days after the hurricane hit earlier this month.
We were so lucky. We have a pier and beam foundation, so our pipes are underneath the house. They are also flex tubing, not PVC like most of them, so our pipes didn't burst, and we had water. So many of our friends had to go to the bayou to collect water just to be able to flush the toilet. Other friends used the backyard as a toilet. Texas wasn't prepared for this because we don't get this type of weather. The coldest it has ever been here is the blizzard of 1899. 1899. This is why we aren't prepared. Hurricane, we are experts at that. Which is good since Beryl is going to hit somewhere on the TX coast.
Love your content , great reactions. Unfortunately, we lived through it. We live in the DFW metroplex and when the power went out, it lasted 12 hours. We, luckily, have a SIL, who had kerosene stoves and lanterns (we also have a fireplace and had wood to last a few days). Our pantry was stocked prior to the shutdown and had running water. The rolling blackouts lasted about four days. Yes, we have COLD weather, even snow and ice during winter months. They say if you live in Texas and don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes. Continued success with your channel!!!
I live in Houston and I was home for that winter ice storm. I had no electricity or water for 4 days. Every surrounding state hotels were completely booked. In Houston my apartment was averaging about 20 degrees and everything was completely shutdown. But I’m born and raised in northern Michigan and used to freezing temperatures, plus with my job I work in even colder temperatures such as the negatives which is very normal for my job. I wasn’t really affected by the cold, but just bored because everything was closed.
I live a few miles from the pile up on I-35. We never lost power or water but our heat pump on our air conditioning system froze so it no longer provided heat and our water froze in every pipe except for our master bathroom. My family is lucky because we drive out to a well in Canton, TX every few months and fill a truck bed's amount of water into self reliance water jugs so we had a months worth of water in our garage. We also go out and cut down trees at friends houses or we grab tree branches from roadsides after storms so we had about 1.5 cords of wood. We were warm and we had water. Our pipes never busted because we left the taps open on all faucets. I never knew doing this would be useful but i thank God that we had been doing this before the freeze.
From San Antonio here. When the freeze started, I had just come home from the hospital after being on the ventilator due to COVID. I was home, but required to be on oxygen. On day 2 of the freeze, we lost power due to the rolling blackouts in our area. The oxygen machine connected to the power outlet of course shut off, forcing me to use the portable tanks of which I had two. I ran out of oxygen on the 3rd day. My brother had to stay up all night to make sure I didn’t stop breathing in the middle of the night and if the power would come back on, he would put the oxygen on me and I couldn’t move from my spot on the couch at all. But then the power stopped coming back on. My mom had to push me into the bathroom in my wheelchair and help transfer me if I needed to go to the bathroom bc without oxygen I couldn’t even stand by myself. It was horrible. On the 4th day, we were getting so cold that we had to risk the drive going to my sister’s house bc amazingly she still had power and I could finally use my oxygen again. It was such a crazy and scary experience to contemplate my possible death on a daily basis that whole time after just surviving being on the ventilator and covid. I’m so glad and thankful that I am still here.
Houstonian here. The deep freeze was completely out of the ordinary. We went 2 days without power (we were lucky). It was the worst power outage I had seen in my 32 years in Houston until Beryl now. Our grid has been extremely fragile since the freeze it wasn’t even this bad power wise for Allison, Ike, & Harvey (other major storms). But Beryl has been the worst there are many people on day 6 with no power. Some have even been told they won’t get power for another week
I live in Austin, was of course here during "snowvid" the week from hell. We lost power and had no water. Filled all containers including trash cans in our home full with snow to melt for flushing toilets. Had snow to melt for drinking water when the power would occasionally come on for brief moments. We had heard the weather was going to get bad, so we did set aside some drinking water, but had no idea how unprepared the utility company was and that we would be without for so long. Texas doesn't have snow plows and the snow was thick. Plus the roads were icy. All generators had sold out in Austin and surrounding areas. It was so cold and primitive feeling. Even once the power came back, stores took a couple of weeks to have even the most basic items back in stock. Austin is a decent size city too, this has never happened here. We have since purchased a generator, but plan to drip faucets and leave town if/when this type of forecast happens again. During the following spring, everyone was urged to put out dishes of sugar water for the bees and hummingbirds because so many plants/flowers didn't survive.
I had been through 2 weeks of flooding and no power in freezing temps after hurricane sandy. But TX 2021 was something else. TX 2021 wasn't single digits it was NEGATIVE 7 in my area. No power for a week and no WATER! We cooked on the grill outside (in the garage with the door open) in negative temps. We boiled snow in the fireplace. We had to do toilet bags. We had to ask the neighbors for wood. We huddled by the fireplace in our living room with 22' ceilings which had no heat retention. And even if you could get out there was nothing to buy. Home depot had cut all wood of every size and sold it. The roads were inpassible and trucks stacked up miles long outside the state. There was no water to buy and we nearly ran out. Even once it started to thaw after a week the frozen pipes burst. It was a 6 week wait for plumbers working 20 hour days. Ercot and their solar and wind initiatives were fully to blame. The articles said we were 4 seconds from a catastrophic failure so they HAD to turn us off to prevent repairs that could take months. We had to beg our friends returning from FL to bring us food and water. It was a total nightmare!!!! You don't realize how fragile it all is until it all fails. I am now learning to prep.
It was bad. I had no power for four days, no rolling blackouts for me. I still have anxiety attacks when my power even blinks or goes off for a few minutes. I was alone with my two cats and we huddled under every single blanket, comforter or quilt I owned. I tried really hard to sleep as much as possible. I had a fireplace but learned when smoke filled my home that a part of it was broken. I actually had to open all my doors and some windows to clear the smoke making my situation much worse and my home even colder. You feel so helpless because there is nothing you can do and we had no idea as to when it would end. We were completely unprepared and our power grid is a joke. We came so close to having no electricity for months. I now own a generator, a snow shovel, stuff to help melt ice on your driveway or side walk, battery powered lanterns, SO many flashlights, emergency radio, scentless candles that will last days, a big stockpile of wood. You get the idea. It caused some real trauma. Our politicians were and are useless and we even had a state senator, Ted Cruz, who got caught flying to Cancun to get away from it all. All that at the end of the video about changes being made and things getting better is a joke. We are still just as likely to have a repeat of the same scenario. Right now with temps around 108 degrees we have a good chance of losing all power again. ERCOT has an app where you can actually see how much energy is available and what the current demand is, those numbers get REALLY close a lot.
My husband and I are from the Northeast. Most houses heat with oil for this reason. When the storms hit, we had barely moved into our new manufactured home so even we weren't really prepared. Fortunately for us, the power company is a private co-op and was not with Ercot. So we only lost our power for eight hours. My husband was checking the temperature of the water and just before the power came on, I was going out to the RV to get the antifreeze for the S-pipes and toilets. *We* were fortunate. Not too many other people were.
It was the day after Valentine's Day, so many people who had slept over at their partners' houses were stuck with them for days - including the maintenance officer of my student dorm. He had to walk me through how to shut the main water valve off after 6 pipes broke in the laundry and dormroom areas of the building. It was also still COVID, so we had to figure out how to house the displaced students without having multiple people in close proximity to each other. My dorm didn't lose power or water, but most of the other student dorms in our non-profit organization did. We created a mutual aid structure in which food was removed from fridges in dorms that had no power and stored outside in "igloos" until they could be picked up by those of us who had AWD vehicles. The food was slowly driven to my dorm and one other that still had power and water, where a team of masked and face-shield wearing students were cooking for 500 and where huge pots of water were boiled day and night (with gas). The boiled water and cooked food was then distributed back to the dorms with no power. Students in exterior rooms who had no power were moved between buildings. Luckily COVID meant our organization had low occupancy and there ended up being enough rooms for all the displaced students. We collected jackets, blankets, food, and water from the dorms and delivered them to a group of homeless people who had taken residence in an empty building nearby. It was a scary time, but I was proud to see my fellow Texans rise to the occasion
My husband and I have been in Tx for almost 20 years. We BOTH come from snowy climates on the east coast and are used to these conditions. We didn't leave the house.
My town wasn't part of Ercot then, which I am very thankful for. We have since become part of it, but hopefully they are more prepared in case this happens again.
I live in a town outside of Lubbock and while yes, in summer we can get temps up to 114 or so but in the winter we can get snow, icy rains, icy roads, and temps below zero. All 254 counties here in Texas were affected by this. My little town gave out free water. Then ridiculousI just layered so many clothes and used heavy quilts. I had plenty of food so I wasn’t worried about that and there was no place I needed to be that I had to get out on the roads.
I will never forget the storm. I was fairly new to Texas, so the freeze threw me off. When the power went out, I remembered my family in Wisconsin stored their food on a screened-in porch. When I asked why, they told me that in the winter, outside was colder than the refrigerator. So when it happened, I put my freezer items in a tub and sat them on my patio. The food in my fridge, I put in my tub and sat it at my front door since it wasn't as cold. At night I had a ton of candles and surrounded them with mirrors, so my room was pretty bright.I just read books. However, on the last day of the freeze, I went to the grocery store. When the elevator opened, water began pouring in. A pipe burst and the bottom floor was flooded. When I came back, I did not realize that the sidewalk froze. As soon as I stepped up, I fell down hard. When I hit the ground, I knew something happened. I was by myself and no one was outside, so I had to scoot to the drain pipe to pull myself up. It was the longest walk of my life. Every few steps, I had to stop because of the pain. I called the paramedics and they were not going to take me to the hospital. They told me that there was no way I could have walked that far if my leg was broken. They almost convinced me until one of them hit my big toe on accident!! I told them to take me to the hospital. Within 20 minutes the doctor walked in and said, "Yep, you broke your leg!" I waited until I was 50 and broke my first one! LOL
It can get pretty cold in north Texas, and I've seen it ice over for several days before, but this was insane. And it wasn't just north Texas this time, it wa pretty much the entire state. I lived in Houston for a decade, and I saw snow once, for about ten minutes before it melted. This would be akin to an F5 tornado hitting L.A.
Southern States are just not equipped to handle cold. Georgia had a freeze one year during rush hour. Cars were stuck on the Interstate and people had to walk to safety. It costs too much to keep all the equipment and stuff for ice. We just shut down when we hear ice or snow is coming. We had a storm a few years ago and we had no power for a week. Thank God we had a fireplace. Snow is something we don't want!!
We were pissed! In Texas, we are used to the blistering heat. Not the severe freeze. My friend in Minnesota said she was running to the store in waist-high snow like it was nothing that day. ERCOT told us there would be 'rolling blackouts' that would only last 'half an hour so' as not to put a 'strain on the entire grid.' When our power went off, we waited and waited and then realized the power was not coming back on again. Our HOA president was a hero. Sam and several men were out for hours and hours helping neighbors. That's TEXAS! Neighbors that had generators invited neighbors over. Everyone brought food from their freezers. We played cards and ate stew. If you had gas, you were okay during the day. But when it was time to sleep, we had to turn the gas off. After it was all over, we have attorneys in the neighborhood that make sure our politicians heard.
We got lucky, and only lost power for about an hour or so. We were without running water for 2 or 3 days, but we had water stocked up, so we were okay. We got 6" of snow here, and we normally only get snow about once a decade. Temperature dropped to -6 F (about -21 C), whereas normally the lowest temperature we get during winter is just below 20 F (about -6.6 C).
Texas I’m the summer is like 100-110 usually…. Our winters can be bipolar but sometimes that jet stream dips low and stays and we aren’t as prepared for that…. I was lucky as my power didn’t stay off for too long.
I live in North east Texas and definitely remember this. We didn't have it super bad like some cities did but we got the most snow I've ever seen in my life time and the lowest temperatures ever.Just about all stores closed except emergency services and I had to work being an ekg tech at the hospital. It was crazy. Got tons of pictures..ill never forget it.
Plano, Texas here. I was working at a grocery store. Shelves were empty, and we closed after us ice skating trying to get the carts... because a closed store has that to be worried about
I was without power for 4 days. But it cycled off and on for a while. It would be on for about 10 minutes, then off for several hours. We had food, but the greatest battle was staying warm. We had a gas fireplace but it only kept the room we were in slightly warm. The rest of the house dropped to below freezing. Keeping the water pipes from freezing was also a big deal for many. We knew the forecast showed warmer temps coming but not soon enough. We were going to have to ride it out for a minimum of 4 days.
I live in the Fort Worth area and worked in Dallas at the time. I remember a scary drive to work one morning and I received a panicked text from my mom asking if I was okay and if I made it to work okay. I was confused. 2 hours later I saw the news about the accident and understood my mom thought I was in the 100+ car pile up. My bosses realized how unsafe driving was and told me not to come back until the temperature rose and the roads were safe. We were lucky to not lose power. Very fortunate. But, the water pipes did burst in our apartment building and we were without water for days. It was a crazy situation to see. I still have pictures of grocery store shelves completely bare. As for the roads, many don't realize that a fair bit of the road ways are elevated. You know when you drive over a bridge it'll say it might freeze so watch for ice. Because of this, the roads get black ice fast. I lived in Seattle, I spent a winter in Wyoming, so I have experience whereas many from Texas have far less severe winter weather driving experience. So it doesn't matter if you have mad skills driving on those roads, cause the person next to sure as hell doesn't! It was a mess. It was a complete clusterfvck.
We live a few states north of Texas. When their power grid went down, ours had to kick in to help. We were dealing with blackouts and the wind chill was like 45 below zero here. Crazy.
Ahhhh, the year of snovid (snow + covid) We were without power for 17 hours. My family's savibg grace was that fuzzy blankets are my love language 🤣 The worst part was that I have medication that had to be refrigerated
“Texas Snowmageddon” we were lucky. We lived with family at the time. My dad’s house had a gas fireplace and stove so we could still cook and huddle by the fire. When we had no water we had to melt snow. But my husband’s parents still had water on and off so we trecked over there for the last bit of it.
I live in San Antonio. I'm in my 60's and I have lived here all my life. I can count on one hand how many times we have had snow. When we do get snow it's gone very quickly. This was very different. For the record the Panhandle and greater Dallas / Fort Worth area do get winter weather just about every year. Our city was shut down for about a week. We lost power in out house and it 40 degrees inside. It we slept on the floor of our living in sleeping bags in front of the fireplace. During the day we would sit in our in the driveway with the engine running and the heater turned on. That was how we kept warm briefly during the day. We would also charge our cell phones during this time. It is very expensive to retro-fit utilities for winter weather. In South Texas there is less that a four percent chance of such an event happening. We gambled and lost. In the aftermath, the highest priority was upgrading with water utilities. We did have issues with water pumps going down. Right now it all seems like such a distant memory. We in very brutal Summer right now. We could use some rain. No Hurricanes please. Best of luck to my friends in Houston that just took a hit from Hurricane Beryl.
West Texas gal here! We are prepared for SOME snow and ice, but mainly the heat. Our power grid wasn't prepared for any of that! I live near an air force base, so we never lost power, but many of my family did. I had Rubbermaid tubs of show melting for bathroom needs. My 2 kiddos were champs, and we managed to stay in layers to keep the heater from being overworked. Our neighbors had huge pickup trucks and would make grocery runs, bring free water, and take people to warming centers. It was so scary, but everyone pulled together. The school I work at had a washer and dryer, and the principal offered for us to bring laundry since so many had pipes that burst.
San Antonian here. It was a nightmare. I never lost power at my apartment but didn't have water for almost two weeks because so many pipes burst at the complex. So I stayed with friends but they didn't have power initially. The nights were miserably cold. The roads were treacherous. The winters since "snowvid" have been scary. I never want to experience that again.
Just East of Dallas here. Worked at a hospital in Tyler. Went in and stayed there for 3 days. Took me 4 hours to drive 50 miles home from work when I finally left. Slept there, and it was COLD, even inside. The roads were so bad that we couldn't discharge patients to home for 3 days.
I remember that, I have a gas stove so I did alot of baking and the stove on helped keep it warm. We were worried mostly about pipes breaking, we kept the water running slowly so the pipes didn't burst.
I felt bad for everyone in Texas. Living all over I have just learned a variety of preparedness options for different weather and cold without power is one of the toughest situations and they had no experience in what to do.
I live in North Texas and was recovering from cancer surgery I just had the week before. One of our pipes in our utility room burst and flooded that room and the kitchen. I was in no shape to do very much and my husband had to do it all, plus take care of me. We ended up having to shut off the water. We relied on bottled water (luckily we had plenty thanks to stockpiling a lot during my 5 months of chemo). We were also lucky we never lost power like a lot of people did. Our block is on the same grid as the fire station down the street. If you were lucky enough to have a fire station or hospital nearby, you probably didn't lose power. Our furnance runs on natural gas so we had heat the entire time. We could also cook on our gas cooktop. I don't know what we would have done if we had no electricity or a more severe pipe burst. Over 700 people died as a result of the storm and the grid failure, but I don't know if the State of Texas has ever put out a number that really reflects how much people suffered. (One man, a flower vendor, froze to death in the room he rented in Dallas. His story just haunts me.) The storm uncovered how the power companies invest as little as possible into the grid/power stations (it would cut into profits to upgrade power stations and lines for storms that might only happen once every 50 to 100 years by old style conventional thinking. These are not coventional times.). Companies should not get away with doing as little as possible because it hurts the bottom line, profits, and shareholder interests. It's not right because people end up paying the price in the end. That needs to change or else we will see more of this. We are already did with the Centerpoint failure with Hurricane Beryl in Houston just this mornth (July 2024).
Dallas here…..I lost so much mature landscaping during this freeze….some things 25+ years old. The unusual thing about this freeze was that it got below freezing and stayed there. Typically in Texas, it will get cold enough to sleet or snow overnight, then warm up just enough to melt it during the day. But this event stayed way below freezing and our infrastructure is not built for that. I saw it coming and put in for time off from work, so was able to drip my faucets and avoid a broken pipe disaster.
I live in Laredo, TX where highway I35 begins. I remember how cold it got that winter. Even here some parts of the city had outages and even our water pipes froze so that meant no running water. Luckily the water got restored after 1 and a half day. Still one of the most bizarre things that I experienced here in Texas after the whole world shut down during the pandemic of 2020.
It was pretty intense. We got lucky that we didn't lose power (we live behind a hospital and are on the same grid as it) but our heater went out it got down to 5c in the house. with our gas fire places keeping the parlor and bathroom warm. we set up box fans to push the warm air around the house. It was also the first time we had friends over since covid started - I took the truck and picked people up, and our house ended up full with air mattresses and people. We thankfully have gas stove/oven so we were able to cook and boil water. The water went out city wide, and we got to -18c outside. We also pay more year round for electricity to have a flat rate, so we didn't get screwed like a lot of people did. By the end of it we got 14 inches of snow (35ish cm) Our houses are also built to protect against heat and release heat instead of hold onto it, so it's harder to keep the house warm in the winter. Usually we don't freeze, or have much of a freeze in the winter, so this was definitely out of the ordinary.
I'm watching this as we move into day 5 of no power from Hurricane Beryl. Fallen tree unfortunately took landed on my generator. But spared the house. During Winter Storm Yuri, we were without power for almost 5 days, I think. The days kinda blurred together. I had my wife and our son stay at her parents property across the street since they have propane heat, and I stayed at our property. I can handle both extreme temps, especially since I built a fire in our backyard and cook various meals. Because we live in a rural area of Montgomery County, we have well and septic system. The video and images really don't do justice to what we experienced.
I didn't have any power outages for that storm and considered myself lucky about that. Unfortunately on Wednesday it heated up above single digits for a few hours and then my damn pipe burst in the laundry room because the pipes were in the ceiling next to the breezeway to the garage and it froze up but defrosted for a while, causing the copper pipe to burst. So for the rest of the week we had power but no water. It sucked. Plus rather than hot weather I'm used to after a natural disaster like a hurricane, we had freezing weather. It was miserable.
We were living in Frisco (northern DFW) at the time and remember this like it was yesterday. The blackouts would last well over an hour and the power would come back for MAYBE 15 minutes. We lived on the third floor of an apartment building and had our 1 year old bundled up. It was freezing in the apartment and everything was pitch black except some random businesses and stop lights. Fire trucks were parked at some of the main intersections waiting to respond if they needed to. Thank God my father in law lived near a hospital and had power. What was normally a half hour drive took nearly 2 hours and we stayed there comfortably for 4 days until everything had been restored. It was INSANE. I’ll just add that Texans don’t really have or need heavy winter coats because for the most part our winters are mild/moderate with freezing temps not lasting for more than a week at a time. Also, many homes here don’t have fireplaces so there wasn’t a way for our household in particular to stay warm. It truly was a state of emergency.
I lived in Lewisville at that time. I lived onsite the property that i worked at, several of us employees did, and we had to walk the property every night for a fire watch because two of our sprinkler lines had frozen and burst. Luckily our power didnt go out.
Texas is quite a sizable state as you know. I live in Amarillo which is basically in the middle of the Texas Panhandle(the square shape at the top of Texas). Normally we get much worse winter weather than south Texas. I have seen a true blizzard, and got stuck at work more than once due to ice and snow.
We live in Austin, the Capitol of Texas, and we were here in during the big freeze. We were very lucky to be living in a newer house with great insulation and a natural gas fireplace and stove. We also have a large spa/hot tub holding several hundred gallons of water. We had multiple gasoline generators that refused to start at 7 degrees Fahrenheit. With the vented fireplace and Partly vented stove we never got super cold inside. To use the toilet I had to carry 5 gallon buckets of water from the hot tub outside through the length of the house. I also own quite a few battery powered tools so I had several lanterns and flashlights so we always had light and a charge for our phones. Phones didn’t matter much though. We lost internet and cell signal as soon as the power went out. After two days the electricity and phone signal would come back once or twice a day for a few minutes. The signal was very weak and slow but it allowed us to text our children who were at their university. They were very lucky and had intermittent power the entire time. They lost their water on day three but had some warning and filled their tubs which got them through the next two days. Now we have a very expensive home backup generator powered by natural gas. We have multiple electric heaters and a pump to move water from the hot tub to the toilets. I doubt that the state is really prepared if something like this happens again. The Republican Party, which controls the state, is heavily funded and aligned with the oil and gas industry. This is not conducive, IMO, to effective regulation of industries that don’t really want to spend their money preparing for disasters that may never happen.
This was by far the worst storm i can remember in tx. We lost water day 3 or 4 into. We were still going into work through most of this. We worked retail at the time sooo yeah that was bs. We never lost power luckily but at that time i lived across the street from a sub station. Without power we would have lost most of our pets for sure. I remember being at work when the wreck on 35 happened, so many customers of mine who were nurses just rushing to it or the hospitals. The whole area of dfw just felt off and dystopian. Then when it got warmer all the pipes busting in homes and mains busting the roads complicated things as it would freeze overnight.
I'm from Houston, TX, and I'll never forget the freeze. My daughter was 4 years old. We had gone to Walmart to get a few supplies, and a we were turning the corner in our neighborhood, my husband's phone rang. It was our neighbor who said he heard a loud noise in our house. When we opened the front door, water started pouring out of the house. The pipes had burst and the house was flooding. It's was about 2 or 3 inches of water. Our dog was home. It was about 12 degrees F outside, which is UNHEARD OF in SE Texas. We didn't have power for a few days but thank God my neighbor had a generator outside and he fed an extension cord over the fence into our back yard so we could have a little power. But our ceiling had caved in when the pipes burst and the draft from the attic was horrible. I hope to never have to go through that again. But Texas is not prepared for anything. Hurricane Beryl just came through here a few days ago and there are people still without power and it's the middle of July! It's hot as hell outside! I'm glad my family didn't lose power but so many of my coworkers and other family did. It's a mess out here.
I live just north of you, in Conroe. I remember that storm too well. I swear I have PTSD from that experience. The house we were renting at that time is now ours as of March of this year. That old girl is not insulated sufficiently for temperature extremes. She's got good bones, but needs a lot of love and repairs. I'm already trying to get a permit for a project to help with efficiency and temperature management. All of the improvement plans that I have written down were spurred by that 2021 storm. I want to be able to independently manage future outages and storms to maintain sanitation, communication, relative comfort, and nutrition. With so much politics involved in our power grid, I know we're on our own when our services fail. There are ways to make these moments more endurable, but it requires some changes in our house layout and equipment.
I’m in Pasadena Tx. I was without electricity until this past Saturday afternoon damn Beryl!
My parents are in Kingwood and they’re on day 9 of no electricity
@@avaunamallett6176 I was in TX (Houston) some years ago in the dead of the summer. I was pleasantly surprised in that it was not nearly as bad (heatwise) as when I was in Florida or Arkansas. The temps were hot, but unlike the other two states around 6:30 in the evenings TX became very pleasant. We could sit out without that awful humidity.
@@calme-dx2dp lol I'm sorry which Houston did you go to?? I've lived here for 25+ years and the humidity during the summer is always ridiculous. Like 100% humidity. And the cooling off doesn't start until after sundown which is 830.... I used to go to summer camp in Arkansas, and although it was hot it was nothing compared to Houston's humidity and heat.
My daughter called me from Buda, texas ( outside san antonio) to ask me what to do to save her outside plants. I asked her why she was calling about cold weather. She said they were exspecting -17 degrees. I told her to forget her plants and save her house. That low tempreture is unheard of and houses are not designed for it.
@@jfife4211 I hope that -17 degrees is in Celsius because we've never gotten that cold here in Central Texas.
Mo
@@shereemanbeck9068they did in bastrop, temp gage at my Grandmothers house at the lake was -14
Buda is far closer to Austin than it is San Antonio, and Austin was hammered by the storm.
Central Texas has multiple issues regarding extreme cold temps and winter storms.
There is a lot of limestone, in particular west of I-35 (N/S highway), which prevents most water, sewer lines and power lines from being buried deeply, or buried at all, in the case of many of the power lines that stretch across the state. Deep freezes haven't been a big enough issue, historically speaking, to undergo the huge expense of digging deep into the limestone (and likely hitting a spring, which is another issue).
Also, since a lot of our power lines are exposed to the elements, an ice storm can be particularly bad, as many of our trees here are live oaks, which are semi-decidious - meaning that they don't drop their leaves until early Spring. Even trace amounts of ice can be devastating to a live oak as the added weight can absolutely destroy even the largest oaks. Jan/Feb 2023 brought as much as .75" of ice, followed by winds that made it look like a winter hurricane came through. Austin lost 1/3 of its tree canopy and tree debris was still being picked up 4 months after the storm.
Our winters the past few years have had some pretty ferocious storms. Snow, ice and deep cold that freezes pipes inside walls that were designed to keep the cold IN not out.
I have been waiting so long for you to react to this! I’m from Fort Worth and let me tell you, this video doesn’t do it justice. It’s was a terrible time. No power, no water for days. Luckily I had my roommate so I wasn’t alone but my 93 year grandmother was also stuck at her home alone, no power. We almost lost her as she developed pneumonia along with the dehydration and lack of food.
Thank you for reacting to this. It became a core memory for me and I’m sure many others.
Yeah this time was traumatic. It flared my pain and anxiety disorder badly the entire time and even days after. I'm sorry y'all had to worry about your grandma! I hope she's ok now
My 1st reaction to this video was as bad as it sounds, it was actually generous regarding how bad it was and why. It was so much worse.
There was a hot minute (pun...idk) where I was making Mad Max memes in the dark on my phone.
My husband and I were part of "Snovid 2021." We lost power and water for 4 days. We went and gathered snow to be able to use our toilet. I've never been that cold in my life. Luckily, I keep all quilts and blankets, so we were able to stay warm that way. But we also had 3 layers of clothes on. I never want to go through that again.
Hi there, I’m from the Northern US. I hope you don’t go through that again either, but given how crazy weather is these days, here are some suggestions. If you get cold weather warnings, always get more food than you think you’ll need, and I’d recommend getting a gallon or two of water just in case. Have an emergency blanket or two on hand. If the power goes out, have everyone stay in the same room and if you have sources of heat that don’t require a plug in bring it into the room and huddle together. Leave your water dripping too. If you have to melt snow do so with a heater, don’t try to melt it by shaking a container around or any way that will make you sweat as it then makes it more likely for you to freeze to death.
Don’t drive unless you have to, but if you have to drive, go slow, and if you skid turn in the opposite direction. If you have a 4 wheel drive car/truck use that over front wheel. Most important, stay calm.
I know it’s a bit late and hopefully you never have to use this, but I hope you can copy this and keep it for emergencies.
@@MsMorriit happens here periodically. Nothing this drastic but texas doesnt have those things that make winter storms. Like during the superbowl here in the DFW area. They brought in snow plows from oklahoma as we never need it. But great advice. Grew up in north dakota so i would help those around me through the years to manage the mess.
Don't go to minnesota, Wisconsin, New England, Michigan or parts of northern Indiana then. That was a light dusting for them. lol
@@aaronburdon221 they have the infrastructure and equipment up there to deal with it. We don't down here. IF someone up there got stuck with no power or heat or water in the cold, they'd be just as f'ed as we were.
Lol! I've never heard that term "snovid 2021" that's a good term for it because I do think the pandemic had a part in this as well.
My cousin was one of the people that was in that pile up. She’s a nurse. Was on her way to work. She didn’t know it at the time but she was 2 months pregnant. She ended up lodged under an 18 wheeler. She had to escape the car and jump the concrete barrier in the median before the car behind her slammed into her own car which lodged it even further under the 18 wheeler. She probably would’ve died had she not gotten out.
Wow! So very smart and so very lucky!!!
@@jennaB209 my Nextdoor neighbor was a nurse at JPS and was also in the wreak. I hope your cousin and family are doing great now. Yesterday, I was on the same expressway about 10 miles north of where the wreak was. There was a wreck on that part i35 S it took me a hour to drive 7 miles .. a semi had been peeled opened lengthways and caught fire.. I couldn’t tell about the other cars involved.. I always think of all those people any time I pass there.
@@paintedbunting3840 Oh GOD, 35 is a disaster zone even on the sunniest day.
Has to be the exception when your live is saved exiting the vehicle. Glad she was ok.
Im in Houston, and after the 3rd day My apartment had dipped below freezing and was colder on the inside than on the outdoors. On the 2nd day of below freezing temps in my apartment I finally had to go to a shelter for heat and food. Im originally from the north east and experienced several major snow storms, so I knew basic winter survival, but quickly realized how much states with winter weather have a winter culture, with plenty of winter weather resources easily available (clothes, accessories for handling ice, portable kerosine heaters, etc) that i took for granted. Unfortunately most of my neighbors had never seen snow before, or experience below freezing temps for more than a few hours, let alone days. It was bad
Did you lose power this week too?
@@jessietijerina2121 5 days no power during Beryl
@@tyreedillard How hot was it? Without power for the AC there must have been lots of people with heat stroke, especially the elderly.
@marywood2865 with humidity temps got above 100 on my side of the city. Houston does a pretty good job of providing cooling centers for the elderly and sick. Inspite of this there were a lot of heat related hospitalizations, and a few deaths.
@@tyreedillard If Texas was connected to neighboring states for electricity (power grid) maybe nobody would have died, since the power might have come back on sooner. Sounds like prioritizing BS over lives.
What was unique about this situation was that the entire state (which is HUGE) had sub-freezing temperatures at the same time. I've never known for the whole state to be freezing. It's very unusual for south Texas to experience freezing temps. So the electrical grid was stressed to the limit. We were very lucky not to lose power. For 11 days, we were on edge, wondering if and when we'd lose power. The pipes in our master bath froze, but by some miracle, my husband went under the house and found a valve that shut off the water only in the master bath. So we were able to use water in the rest of the house. We got about as lucky as we could possibly have been. So many others were not so fortunate.
Yeah usually this far below freezing is just for the panhandle and North Texas. South Texas may get to 32 degree or something but not teens or below
Not just the grid being stressed. Winter is when most of the power plants do maintenance, so several of them weren't working. And then when the grid started to collapse it just dominoed.
Now what I found out from my friend who is an electrician is that power plants need to have a certain level of power to be able to restart. We were actually hours away from a large number of our plants being unable to do so.
In other states they are on one of the two national grids, so they wouldn't have this issue. But not Texas. Nope, we have to be so independent so the federal government can't require Texas power plants to meet national standards.
@@KellyDVance well if that's the case they need to do maintenance in spring or fall when extreme temps are less likely lol. At least till 2029 I think it is that we are joining other grids
@@peachxtaehyung we aren't joining other grids. The Republican legislature won't do it. As for Spring or Autumn, most of the state is already getting hot by mid-Spring and staying hot till late October/early November. The power plants aren't going to change their schedule due to rare weather events. It isn't practical.
@@KellyDVance how do you know though? I haven't seen any confirmation of not doing it. But the news reported that they're saying they're joining Louisiana and also I think either el paso or new mexico
Fort Worth here. That video doesn’t really do it Justice. It was baaad! I remember waking up and there was no power. It was something like -18 degrees Celsius outside. I had my fire place going but definitely didn’t have enough wood for a week. Even with the fire place going, my place was freezing. I was contemplating what furniture to cut up when the weather let up a bit and I saw a window and made a very scary drive to my friends house who had power. It was normally 50 minutes away, but took over 3 hours because of the road conditions. I’m also a teacher so we coordinate getting blankets n food to some of students in need. Some were really bad off. That all happened before the second storm hit, which really shut everything down. My place didn’t have power for a week, water for 2 weeks. Honestly, I got off pretty easy compared to many others. All in all, good times 😔
Did your pipes burst? We got that when they thawed, flooding the house with ice water.
The issue is that Texas was utterly unprepared for it, because it's so uncommon there. Most of the houses in Texas don't really have proper heating systems, so they rely on electricity for their heat, which is, in a word, dumb. In the Midwest, for example, everyone *knows* that it's normal for a winter storm to knock out power for a few hours (locally, because tree limbs fall on the lines all over the place, and it takes a day or so to get them all cleared and repaired), but basically all houses have gas heat (piped natural gas if you live in a municipality, or a tank of propane or LNG if you live out in the countryside), so folks still have heat, *and* we have closets full of winter clothing, and a bunch of spare blankets and whatnot. (Heck, most people have an old blanket in their car trunk.) Texans have none of that. Up here, the entire regional power grid doesn't go down, because the grid is maintained with winter storms in mind, because we have a couple of them nearly every year, sometimes more, so the power company has people who know what to do. The Texas grid operators had no practical experience with winter storms, and some of their power plants weren't even designed to operate at sub-zero temperatures, which would be unthinkable up here. Everyone in the Midwest has at least some idea how to drive on snow, because even the kids who just got their licenses, have been *walking* on snow for years, so the physics are at least a little intuitive; and most adult drivers have driven on ice and snow many times, so they know what they're getting into. Whereas, many Texans had never seen snow before much less tried to drive on it; their instincts would have been leading them to treat it like asphalt, which is exactly wrong, and when that inevitably goes badly, they're going to mostly respond by going into a panic and doing random things very suddenly, which is even worse. Every municipality in the north has a fleet of snowplows and salt trucks, and the state has them for the highways. Texas does not. Everyone up here has seen the safety videos about not running a car inside a closed garage because of carbon monoxide, they show them in middle school and high school health classes. Who the heck puts in water mains so close to the surface that they're going to freeze the first time there's a mere week of winter weather? And so on and so forth.
Oklahoma is much more prepared than Texas for the cold, snow, and ice. The people there struggled also, but not nearly as much. I live in a newer house. We lost power for maybe 2 or 3 hours. Older neighborhoods suffered quite a bit. The biggest difference is that my water and power utilities are buried in the ground. The falling tree branches did not fall on and break the power lines, and our water lines were not exposed to the extreme cold air, and we knew to have the water dripping on the interior faucets before the cold came. I had a friend at work who had to live in a hotel for a month. He has no power for 3 weeks and had to pay for a plumber to replace all of his water lines for his house.
Dallas here. I was comparatively lucky. I had about a week's worth of food stocked up (though not planned, I have to admit; so I was *really* lucky). I had rotating blackouts: 4 hrs with power, 7 hrs without. So I cooked Hamburger Helper all that week until the ice melted. Temps in my place never got below 57F / 14 C; and even got warmed back up to 72F / 22C before power shut off. This went on for about two or three days, then permanent restoration. I'm still not embarrassed to complain though, because ERCOT was so.. Ok,.I'll say it...Fucked Up with Sweethart Good-Ole Boy'ism that they treated the power system like a mere cash cow, not a public service. ERCOT=Electricity Reliability Council of Texas
@@cwalokie9559 Losing power for 2-3 hours is a very normal thing that happens when winter storms hit. Building a grid so robust that that doesn't happen, would be cost-prohibitive. I know some people who can't stand to be without power for that long, typically because they are deeply addicted to television and can't stand for it to ever be turned off even for a few minutes. (When the power goes out in the Midwest, we still have heat, because that runs on natural gas.) People like that own generators. And yes, this is absolutely real: I personally know multiple people who own a generator specifically so they can keep the television on during power outages. The addictiveness of television is one of several reasons I don't want it in my house.
Im in DFW. I remember our excitement for snow turning into a 4 day struggle to keep our family warm. We had no power or gas. We had no running water which resulted in 30+ breaks in the pipes. The toilet water even froze. It was an extremely stressful time, the whole family was barricaded in a single room and I was sleep deprived because I was constantly checking on the kids (and cat) and making sure they were warm enough. We have an emergency kit that is much better suited for winter emergencies now but I still get anxiety when I see snow in the forecast.
Interesting that it wasn’t mentioned that the TX representatives either left the state or were extremely slow to respond.
How is that relevant to this? The electric grid is run by a private company not elected officials. It’s just a cheap shot to win political points to bring it up.
I was wondering the same thing, while we were all suffering they were enjoying the beach life.
Southern states rarely have snow/ice, and when they do, they're not as experienced in clearing the roads. This example was horrible. Also take a look at Atlanta Snowmageddon of 2014. Snow/ice started mid-morning, after the schools were in session and everyone was at work. Once it started, it didn't stop, and roads became impassable because the traffic wouldn't allow plow trucks to help. People spent the night in their cars on the interstates, completely stuck. Totaled about 2.5 inches. That's all to shut down a major city.
Enough snow to make; A footprint. lol
We also do have snow tires. People fail to mention this very vital point.
Native Minnesotan here who experienced Snowmageddon in Atlanta. It was no joke, and there was more involved than just snow. Where I work at the Cumberland Mall and for many miles around, it was a glare ice surface with powder snow on top. The snow melted and refroze, and that was not easy to navigate on even on a level surface, and my own car slid a few times while I was driving around trying to find a way out of the area. I failed, and ended up staying the night in my office.
In a contest between humans and ice, ice ALWAYS wins.
@@faervas1234 Not in south Texas, those tires are rarely stocked.
The roads were horrific, made worse because many school systems didn't cancel classes. So kids were brought to school only for parents to be called afterward to pick them up. I'd stayed at my parent's place the night before. Had to go pick up niece and nephew bc the school tried to send them all home on the bus - which slid off into a ditch before making it out of the school parking lot. Then went to pick up two adult family members who were stranded at work. I was only able to pick them up bc I had all-wheel drive. I then made a 3.5 hour trip to work (which should have been 70 mins). It was all hands on deck and I remained at work (hospital) for days. But those of us living in Georgia in 1993 remember up to 3 feet of snow, drifts to 6-7 feet. Sounds managable unless you're in a place not prepared for it. We were without power for a full week, without running water for far longer. We were on a dead end road with some 60 downed trees across the road between us and any help.
I lived east of Dallas at the time this storm hit. It truly was insane. Our state is used to heat. Everything here is built for heat and hurricanes, not cold. I was raised in South East Texas. I had never even seen snow that deep in person before. I was one of the lucky ones, we had power and water the whole time and because I grew up on the coast I had prepared like it was a hurricane. That said, we stayed home and my neighborhood jumped to and started helping each other. Since I had power, I let people charge their phones. Someone else was bringing around firewood to those who needed it, others brought food and water to those in need. I had a plan just in case my house lost power (6 people). It was terrifying knowing that some family members, not at my house, needed power for cpaps and they had no power. They were too far away to get to my house.
Hi, I’m from San Angelo, Texas & -1 in 2021, the deep freeze, snowmageddon was horrible. Hotels were full, but because of our animals we decided to ride the storm out. I had just gotten over Covid & returned to work only to be sent home due to the approaching storm. Prior to losing power I had a roast in the oven, my dishwasher running & a load of laundry in the washer. Needless to say the roast had to be thrown away, I manually had to empty water from my dishwasher & washing machine to avoid stale water smells. Our living room became our fortress & our fireplace our only source of heat. We were on our last log when our power was restored & my husband contemplated using planks from our privacy fence if power was not restored.
Our fireplace not only kept us warm, it was also our stove. My husband & son took shifts to keep the fire going. I am glad I collect quilts because we used every one we had & lived in many layers of clothing during the week without power. This is not something we would have ever been prepared for, it would have never crossed our minds that something like this would happen. Yes, it had been 100 years since the last deep freeze but had no idea it could get as bad as it got.
Although we will probably never live to see this happen again, nor will our children or grandchildren, we made sure to purchase a generator, & changed our wood burning fireplace to gas. Whether we experience another outage due to a freeze or high temps we will be prepared as will many Texans across the state. What I learned is that we are resilient, & as neighbors we came together helping each other. We did manage to drive a very treacherous drive to the grocery to find soup but not much of anything else. A treacherous drive to McDonald’s where my husband & son sat in line for an hour to get cheeseburgers made it home safely but had a false hope as they saw houses with power & others without. Yes, 4 houses down from us & the next block had power but we did not, it was bittersweet, we were on the wrong side of the grid, something I never imagined was possible. I had friends who lost loved ones, livestock & other animals. When the snow started to melt we found birds who perished. We had running water but did not use, instead we thankfully had plenty of bottled water that actually froze sitting on our counters, it was truly colder inside our home than outside. While we could not use our bedrooms I was awestruck when I sat on the rock that is my memory foam mattress, yes, it was frozen solid. While our pipes did not freeze our daughter returned to her home to find burst pipes.
The only way to charge our cell phones was in our car & that is when we saw elderly neighbors getting in their cars to stay warm. Night looked like day because of the snow & we lost track of time, hard to fathom. To say that Texans are not resilient, after this ordeal, is an understatement, we took care of each other & our neighbors & as a family became closer. The pictures we were able to take are memories we will never forget. Thank you for taking an interest in what happened here.
My uncle and grampa were in that 100+ vehicle pile up on I35W in Fort Worth. When the bottom falls out of the temperature here, we get black ice which looks like dry road.
I'm from Sherman Oaks, CA, been living in TX for nearly 7 years. This was unlike anything I ever experienced in my life!! Never lost power, but no water for weeks because the pipes in my 1920s garage apartment burst!! ❄️
Houston, Texas. The governing body in Texas refuses to fortify the grid, still. One of our senators in Washington decided it was too cold in Texas, so he flew his family, and himself to Cancun. Once news of his trip made headlines, he flew himself back to Texas. He then claimed he flew his family there, and just went along to help them get “settled in.” That didn’t sit well with freezing Texans. We still refer to him as “Senator of Cancun.” 😡😞
@@MelNel5
He didn't go off to an trip Cancun he was chaperoning a bunch of his children and Friends on their Mexican trip that was planned in advance and was already there. He had to wait in Mexico until another parent could take his place. It was all rather boring and made to be bigger than it was. The job he had in Washington he wasn't really needed. But he went back to texas. To be honest the job he had at the time no one needed his help so his being in Texas didn't make any difference. The news likes to sensationalize things.
@@MelNel5 Name the bast..d….it was Senator Raphael (Ted) Cruz! I hope his hell is of the frozen variety!
@@windyhawthorn7387 he is still a scumbag and your 'story' of the events is what they liked to spin for him
Cancel Cruz and F U ERCOT
Yeah Ted the Turd. He threw his daughter under the bus and she came out and said he lied. He is a little B.
I live in Austin and my apartment was hit pretty hard during the Icepocolypse of 2021. The tough part about it was that there was so much ice, you couldn't drive anywhere for about 6 days (for me, with the hills and such). Then it snowed and the ground was covered about 12 inches of snow, which didn't melt for about 5 days. This is the worst winter storm I've seen in Texas in my 54 years here. We're used to cold spells for about 2 or 3 days at most, then it gets warm again. And nothing here is really built for freezing temperatures, so we just stay home for a day or two and all is well. But this one lasted 7 days and we were screwed. My electricity held up for the first two days, but the huge oak trees all throughout the complex were iced over and started breaking off huge branches onto cars and fences and blocked all access for emergency vehicles, which was kind of scary. It was dropping down to 11 degrees at night. My heat was electric, so when that went out it got down to about 25 degrees in parts of my house. I was sitting at my kitchen table admiring the icicles that had formed on the windows, when I realized they were actually on the inside! Mostly it was just scary because it's just me and my cat. The neighbors were close by, but the nights were long and eerily quiet and dark. I mostly read books by candlelight. I was really lucky that I have a gas stove in the kitchen, so I could cook some things and boil water. When the electricity went out, it was out for 5 days, so no internet, lights, and we had to save phone/texting for emergencies since we couldn't recharge anything. They told us to expect rolling blackouts, where electricity would go out for a few hours, then come back on, but for most of us in Austin, when it went out, it was out for days and days. I was doing all right, but then the pipes froze and I went 2 days without water. We had bottled water, and then melted snow to flush toilets before the ice melted enough to drive to a hotel. It was getting pretty medieval. Even at the hotel, the water pressure was really low, so you couldn't really take a shower. I was there for 8 days as they made repairs to my apartment and got the electricity and water back on, mostly. It took them 8 weeks to get water running again in my kitchen, which really sucked. I was one of the lucky ones, though, as many people died or their houses burned or were flooded. Lots of people's pipes would freeze, which expanded them and cracked them, so when the ice melted, there was a lot of flood damage to homes. I thought the sovereign immunity that the Texas Supreme Court gave Ercot was bullshit. And I don't think they've done anything to improve the grid to prepare for another event. My apartment hasn't changed anything (provided better insulation, windows, or even carbon monoxide alarms), though they did raise our rents by 40% the following year to pay for all the damages costs, or so they said.
Dallas Texan here 🙋🏻♀️I remember feeling a multitude of emotions throughout that time. The first day or two of the snow fall, I remember being in awe of the sheer amount of snow we got. It was like real snow, not “Texas snow” that we normally get, which is sleet, shlushy “snow” and then it al turns to ice 😂
Once things started getting worse I remember feeling nervous, even scared to leave my apartment. I refused to go back to work until most of the roads were cleared up. My boss made me use PTO for that 🙃
I also felt a tremendous amount of guilt because my roommate and I never once lost power or our water access. We lived right next to a bunch a medical centers and hospitals so we shared their energy grid, which are always labeled as “essential”.
I would lay in my bed, all snug and warm, watching the chaos unfold online and just feel so guilty that I’m perfectly warm and safe while others, even my family, who lived just a few miles away from me, had no power.
I’m so glad to see you covering this. Many need to realize just how devastating this was for our state. So many ppl on TikTok were making fun of us saying we were all being dramatic about “a little bit of snow”. The national news sources back then horrifically downplayed the total of fatalities from this event. I was FURIOUS.
the road I live on got luck with power. It never even flickered. It's not part of an essential line. Just really lucky. The water pumps for our little town finally failed/froze up after day 5, so lost water. But our family (myself, my grandparents and my dad, three different houses on the same stretch of land) properly prepared for it. We wrapped pipes exposed to air. We filled a lot of buckets with water to drink and use, etc. We wrap the pipes every single year no matter what. We don't want to deal with burst pipes. Anyway, yeah, we got very lucky on the power. Even more lucky that the internet connection was on a system that never failed either, so I had internet the entire time.
The car pile up happened was on the major higway in Fort Worth.
ERCOT was a joke. Not one of the people on the ERCOT board was in Texas.
A lot of people who did use gas still lost all power because the gas lines froze. Lines in Texas aren't buried very deep because it had never frozen for that long as it did that year.
We were really lucky in that we did not lose power for a long time. But since we live at the bottom of a hill, we couldn't get out of our neighborhood unless we went on foot. And even if the grocery stores were open, we didn't want to risk walking there.
Not many people have carbon monoxide detectors. We installed them after this freeze. We also installed solar and batteries, just in case this ever happened again.
And even in Houston, they STILL can't get funding to start burying the electrical lines, so every single time tropical weather hits, there they go again. In Austin, I wasn't *supposed* to be on blackouts due to proximity to a fire station. And we weren't. It was just the frozen trees kept falling on the lines.
I live in southeast Texas, right in between Houston and Galveston Island. It was bad here too.
In my area, I believe it got down to around 12°F (-11.11°C) that first night, and we got more snow than southeast Texas had ever seen in this area. I think our area specifically, got around 2-3 inches of snow, which is a crazy amount for us because me personally, I have only ever seen snow in this area two other times in my life, and those two times it didn't even cover the ground and was mostly just ice, but during the 2021 deep freeze that shit was actual soft, fluffy snow that completely covered the ground a few inches high.
I can't remember exactly how long we were without electricity, but I think it was 3 days. Others were out for much longer. The power plants began with rolling blackouts to try and ease the strain on the power grids. They began that first night by shutting off electricity in every home in certain areas for a few hours, and then they would turn them back on and turn electricity off in a different areas. They continued that throughout the night, but it didn't help because the power grids failed anyway, which then left everyone without electricity.
Even though my family went without electricity for a few days, which was extremely frustrating having to be so cold as well as losing all the food in our fridge, we still got lucky that we didn't have any busted water pipes or a roof cave in or anything like that. So many others in my area didn't get as lucky as we did.
As a Texan, I can only remember twice it had really snowed at all for me in the 20 years I've lived here before this storm. And those were practically nothing compared to this. I had no idea what was about to happen. I was thankful I didn't have to leave my apartment the entire time.
My mom's house ended up flooded because her pipes burst in the attick, and a bedroom ceiling collapsed. Apparently, a raccoon had taken shelter up there, so when the ceiling fell, so did he.
She and her cat ended up living with me in my 1 bedroom apartment for 10 months.
Racoon 😮! San Antonio here. I remember the 80s snowstorm our patio cover caved in, and we (the kids) started screaming 😂 I noticed that we changed our roof designs after that from flat with rocks to high and pointed, lol
It snows at least once a year in the Dallas area, and there's a major winter freeze every 10 years.
I am crying while watching this. Living through it was awful. I'm just north of Dallas. We didn't have rolling blackouts at my house. As soon as the power went out in the middle of the night, my husband turned on the gas fireplace. We had it running the whole time. The power would come on for about 20 minutes in the middle of the night. That's it. We were cooking in our fireplace. Our neighbors ran an extension cord from their truck to our house so we could charge phones to keep in touch with family. My family in the Austin area were without water for days. Luckily, because we stayed home and kept tabs on our pipes, we did good there. Several of our neighbors had burst pipes and even gas leaks. Every time we get below freezing or our temps get over 100, I fear we're going to go through it again.
First thing we did was get a generator. Now we always keep essentials. Batteries etc. while it was bad, I still don't want to be without power during Texas heat
I also live in DFW. Our homes in Texas are built to withstand the heat and milder winters. Not a full blizzard. Windows cracked in many homes, including mine. I was lucky my water heater was over my garage, and I had a small leak. Others’ homes were flooded when their water heaters broke. It was really terrible. ERCOT has had a lot to answer for in the following years.
@@eowyn8340
Yes but common sense also dictates that when there's going to be an uncommon freeze you prepare for it personally. I have always lived in Texas and we drained water the water heater and all the water lines to the house and winterized everything as much as we could. Had buckets and barrels with water. Doubled check the heating and topped everything up. Our house always has food in the pantry because my grandparents lived through the dust bowl. Got the cold weather emergency sleeping bags out.
My parents have always lived by the rules of you cannot trust electricity and never heat your house with such an unreliable source.
The freeze was a bit boring when you prepare for it. My work had one of the only not frozen toilets in the area so I ended up on bathroom duty. Melting snow and ice for flushing the toilet. Because everybody came by. Then doing wellness checks and shoveling snow for the elderly. Non of us was actually doing our normal jobs. I spent so much time outside.
My parents down south had a pipe burst in the garage. Of course, everywhere it took WEEKS to get so many repairs even scheduled. In the meantime, one of my uncles went and found a suitable hose at Auto Zone or something and rigged it up to work temporarily. Good ol' country boy engineer!
I worked for one of the city’s utilities a month afterward. The people working there told their higher ups what they need to do to keep water flowing but they were ignored, the water issues were easily avoidable.
One of the things that wasn’t mentioned in the video was that people froze to death. Not just homeless people but also people in their homes with no fireplace or heat source. The rolling blackouts caused electricity in my area to only come on for a few minutes to a few hours. Definitely not long enough to heat a home. Many people I know do not have proper winter jackets or clothes. Good thing my family went on vacation to Seattle during the winter a few yrs prior, so we had proper winter clothes. We also had a fireplace and plenty of canned food bc since 2020 my mom has been preparing for a potential ongoing food shortage. We even have a backup freezer for extra frozen food too. We were more fortunate than most. Our pipes didn’t freeze either bc we found a way to keep them warm.
Texas is not used to such extreme cold weather. I will bet most Texans have ever felt temperatures well below freezing for more than a couple of days. It's just like the UK is not used to extreme heat and so many people died due to that heat several years ago. The UK did not require that every home get air con because it is not that common to heat up that much.
Once temperatures get that low pipes freeze and everything becomes brittle and somethings just stop working. Since it was the first time ever that cold, there was noting to really do.
Black ice cased that huge accident and nothing can be done with black ice. Just stay home because you cannot see it at all. And once you hit that ice at any speed, you will lose control of your car, truck or van. It is the scariest thing about driving in the winter. Snow is bad but black ice is deadly
I grew up in NY State I am glad I did because the state gets both extremely hot and cold temperatures. Getting both extremes very often teaches you how to survive and handle both hot and cold weather.
You are correct. I live in south Tx and I have never been that cold in my entire life. I've been around snow and ice in north Tx but there was always a nice warm house to go back into. I didn't even know about simple stuff like hanging a blanket over the window.
NY rarely gets above 80. For a Texan 80 is nice weather.
@@KRIAJK Not true. I am a NY native and NYC is brutally hot in Summer-- almost 90F daily with 100% humidity.
@@ESUSAMEXi grew up in north dakota. We got the same. We would reach 100°f for a couple weeks now and then. High humidity. Then winter every year 2 weeks never getting above 0°F. In texas now. Was able to help those around me. Plus when it came to going to work i could get there when no one else could. Granted 1.5 hours to go 30 miles, i could still get there.
@@ESUSAMEX Well, it depends on where in Texas. Folks in NW Texas (the Panhandle) are pretty familiar with extremely cold temperatures and snow/ice.
Texen here. I line fairly south in the state. And this is out of the ordinary. We are use to tripical storms not freezes. It just does NOT get that cold here. I have seen it really snow only twice. Only stuck on the ground once. Its humid and HOT here. 60 degrees is what our cold here.
Had to boil snow for water but got off light compared to my mom who lost water and power. She was so listless when I talked to her, I convinced her to start a fire in her wood-burning stove with a leaky pipe because warmth was a bit more important. She cracked her window to let the smoke out, but had asthma problems for several weeks after. You better believe she had that wood-burning stove fixed by the next winter.
Also, OMG how did I miss that the Hilton fire was during the freeze?
I'm in north TX. This video fails to talk about the 3-6 FEET of snow that fell between the two winter storms during the polar vortex. We called it the Snowmagedon of 2021! Our temperature did get down to -9°F and the wind chill was around -21°F. My family's house was lucky to be on the same electrical grid as one of our city's hospitals, so we only lost power for 2 hours before it was up and running again, and I had already cooked a big pot of chilli and a pot of beef stew. Both of which made 5 meals for my family of 5( I know, but for some reason, I just can't seem to make small batches of food). When the power went out, I pulled out over 20 blankets from all over the house, and the kids were like, "Where did you get all of them?" I said, "What? Do you think my crochet hooks are just for decoration? " Let's just say everyone (human and pets) was able to stay warm that week due to Nana's hobbies of cooking and crafting!
House carbon dioxide detectors in most homes here are battery powered
Hi! From Austin, Texas here. I was living in a very run down apartment when this happened. I was without power for 7 days and out of water for 8. We couldn't get out of complex parking lot because it was a solid sheet of ice and no one (not even jacked up jeeps) could get traction. Me and my neighbor trudged over a mile to a shopping complex in hopes that something was open. About the 4th day, a little mom and pop Mexican restaurant across the street broke out their grills and we were able to get hot food. I had been eating vegetables out of a can for days. At one point it was 36 degrees in my apartment. There was quite literally nothing to do except sleep and read. Me and my cats kept each other warm under every single blanket I owned. I shoved towels in every crack of every door and every window in desperation. The apartment building next to mine caught fire due to a candle. It was one of the craziest things I've ever been through. . Meanwhile, our senator hopped on a plane to Mexico with his family....people died...Fast forward a year later and we had another mini-freeze. I was out of power for days. Texas needs to drop its ego and get off its own power grid
My mother died during the "Texas Ice Age." She slipped on the ice at work on Thursday morning, hitting her head on a metal handrail and the concrete when she fell. I picked her up from the ER where every room was full of people with head injuries. They checked her out and said she was OK, but apparently she had a slow bleed. She collapsed at work that next Monday and was gone.😭
I'm really sorry for your loss. May Jesus give you & your family peace.
Noooo. 😢
I hope she is at peace and that you are feeling better :(
@@txmap That is so awful. Im so sorry you lost her.
I remember that week well. It was just a couple of months after my husband died, so I was all alone in our house. Our stove is electric, so that didn't work. I have a small, gas powered generator, but it provided only enough power to maybe charge my cell phone. It tripped when I hooked up the coffee maker or portable stove, so I pulled the outdoor grill up close to the house and opened the window to heat up something. That didn't work well either, but it was better than nothing. There were short periods of power, so during those times I fixed some food and made a huge cup of coffee and filled up a large Yeti cup, just so I could drink something hot. Ice froze around my door, so I had a hard time opening it. When I did, my sidewalk and driveway were solid ice. Didn't even want to attempt to go anywhere. I had a couple of bags of sand, which I did sprinkle around the front of the house, and it helped a little. It was honestly miserable and I was kind of scared. And yes, I did let the water drip constantly for a couple of days. No pipes burst, thankfully, and my town's water stayed clean.
@@dranet47 where do you live!. Im just an hours drive from Dallas off of 35!
@@sandrajones8339 Just east of Dallas.
In San Antonio the rolling black outs were so bad. We literally had no power for 8-10 hours and then our power would turn on for a couple of hours then shut off again. We tried to charge everything we could when we had power, and we all slept in one bedroom covered in every blanket we had in our home. We also slept in so many layers of sweaters, sweat pants, socks, beanies and gloves. I hope & pray that we NEVER experience that ever again.
I am right outside of Houston, Tx. My youngest son was 3 months old and my other two were 4 and 8….it was an adventure to say the least. I got all the blankets in my house and covered all doors and windows to insulate. It was 28 degrees INSIDE my home before all was said and done. I used candles and terracotta pots flipped upside down to warm us up as much as possible; it works surprisingly well if you have more than one.
I was born and raised here..I don’t do cold weather. I’d prefer our almost 120 degree summers daily over ever going through that again.
The irony of reliving this whilst now dealing with the aftermath of hurricane Beryl and once again, lack of preparedness and power outages that are for some people going to last the entire week+ in 100F weather. This ice/snow event was awful. I was with my parents who were in their late 70s, and as a child, there is no worse feeling than seeing your parents huddled together for warmth with every single blanket in the house just trying to survive. Unlike heat related events, you can't just walk outside and find a bit of relief because you'll die out there, and you'll die inside. I remember starting the day feeling so giddy and happy because we never get snow, and then next thing you know, everyone is fighting for their lives to find power, to find gas, to stay warm, to make sure people don't die in garages and from fumes from the few that did have generators. We had to relocate to our car and just sit in the drive with the heater on and take small shifts because you also didn't want to run out of gas in case of who knows what. My aunt eventually got power so we went for an hour long drive to get there with people sliding on and off the road, only for her power to fail at 4 am in the morning. It was miserable, and now dealing with power issues all over again with hurricane Beryl and people are so hot and miserable, it's just an annoyance like no other and its no joke because these are life threatening things. People die needlessly in these situations, and my heart always goes out to those infirmed or with disabilities who struggle.
My neighbors had to burn a bed mattress to stay warm I found out.
We helped them and other kids as much as we could during this time.
In our home, we didn't have an issue with drinking water because we already had a lot of bottled water in the house. We pulled our charcoal grill to the driveway and used that for breakfast & dinner. We didn't lose much food because our power didn't go off in the beginning when everybody else's did, so our deep freezer in the cold garage was somewhat ok, as long as we didn't repeatedly open it. We just pulled out what was needed for that day. My family wasn't in too bad a shape during this time since we are from Chicago, and used to some of the winter precautions that we were usually bombarded with every winter on the news while living in Chicago.
Houston here. We were extremely lucky and only lost power for 2 hours during this storm. We had sheets and blankets up over windows to try and help insulate. We usually only see a few days in winter that warrant a hard freeze warning and they don't stick around. Fast forward to now, we just just went through the opposite disaster. Cat 1 Hurricane Beryl took caused power outages for nearly 3 million customers and there's a lot still waiting for restoration in 100+ degree temps. We were out for 6 days.
Not all of Houston was this lucky.
I live in Dfw, Texas and was blessed. We had rolling blackouts at my house for 3 days. It was approximately 45 min of electricity and 30 min of blackout. Only one pipe burst. However, my sister's house flooded and no electricity for 5 days. Poor sis, I offerred for her to come but the roads were so bad it was unsafe.
I live in the DFW area too. I was so blessed that my house never lost power once. Our house was packed with family/friends and pets because we were one of the only people that had power the whole time. They were all freezing and didn’t have fires or water so they braved the roads and came to my house. I love the cold but I hope we never have to deal with that again. I felt so bad for all the Texans. Glad your house didn’t have much damage!!
I’m in DFW area. We had two frozen pipes, one of which burst. Power started going out around 1:30am on Monday. By Tuesday morning, it was 42 degrees Fahrenheit on the SECOND floor of our house. It was even colder on the first floor. I’ve lived in northern states and have never been so scared as I was by this storm. Our houses aren’t built for weather like this. We have pipes on exterior walls and they aren’t buried that deeply in the ground. So water mains were breaking in the area too.
Texas does get snow and cold winters occasionally, but 2021 was accompanied by freezing and sub freezing temps rarely encountered down here. It’s something I’ve only seen less than a handful of times in 40 years. The last time we got nearly as cold was 2011 when Dallas hosted the Super Bowl.
New Braunfels, Texas here! We are South Central Texas and it was a lovely time in the snow. We never lost power but we had no water for 9 days! We have a four wheel drive truck and had large containers that we filled up. It was quite an adventure! I wouldn’t mind it happening again! I know I’m a very different perspective than big city Texas!
The raw videos from that Interstate 35 pileup in Ft Worth are horrific. There is a rise in the highway before the point of the pileup making it virtually invisible to approaching motorists and operators of tractor trailers. Many were traveling well above speeds appropriate for the road conditions and became unstoppable upon reaching the ice. It was sickening the see the speed and violence of the collisions knowing people were being killed.
It was brutal. I live in south Texas and was without power or water for days. It was bizarre driving at night with no light anywhere
Thank you for reacting to this 🙏🏾. I live in Houston and was without power and water for 4 days during the freeze. It was about 20 degrees in my apartment but the great thing about Houstonians is we band together through crazy situations. The infrastructure is still outdated. The majority of the city was without power for days after the hurricane hit earlier this month.
We were so lucky. We have a pier and beam foundation, so our pipes are underneath the house. They are also flex tubing, not PVC like most of them, so our pipes didn't burst, and we had water. So many of our friends had to go to the bayou to collect water just to be able to flush the toilet. Other friends used the backyard as a toilet. Texas wasn't prepared for this because we don't get this type of weather. The coldest it has ever been here is the blizzard of 1899. 1899. This is why we aren't prepared. Hurricane, we are experts at that. Which is good since Beryl is going to hit somewhere on the TX coast.
Lord, what was even IN the bayous at that point? I don't live down there anymore, and in Central TX we had to just use the doggone snow as water.
Yes Kabir, your remarks are 100% correct.
Love your content , great reactions. Unfortunately, we lived through it. We live in the DFW metroplex and when the power went out, it lasted 12 hours. We, luckily, have a SIL, who had kerosene stoves and lanterns (we also have a fireplace and had wood to last a few days). Our pantry was stocked prior to the shutdown and had running water.
The rolling blackouts lasted about four days.
Yes, we have COLD weather, even snow and ice during winter months.
They say if you live in Texas and don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes.
Continued success with your channel!!!
I live in Houston and I was home for that winter ice storm. I had no electricity or water for 4 days. Every surrounding state hotels were completely booked. In Houston my apartment was averaging about 20 degrees and everything was completely shutdown. But I’m born and raised in northern Michigan and used to freezing temperatures, plus with my job I work in even colder temperatures such as the negatives which is very normal for my job. I wasn’t really affected by the cold, but just bored because everything was closed.
I live a few miles from the pile up on I-35. We never lost power or water but our heat pump on our air conditioning system froze so it no longer provided heat and our water froze in every pipe except for our master bathroom. My family is lucky because we drive out to a well in Canton, TX every few months and fill a truck bed's amount of water into self reliance water jugs so we had a months worth of water in our garage. We also go out and cut down trees at friends houses or we grab tree branches from roadsides after storms so we had about 1.5 cords of wood. We were warm and we had water. Our pipes never busted because we left the taps open on all faucets. I never knew doing this would be useful but i thank God that we had been doing this before the freeze.
From San Antonio here. When the freeze started, I had just come home from the hospital after being on the ventilator due to COVID. I was home, but required to be on oxygen. On day 2 of the freeze, we lost power due to the rolling blackouts in our area. The oxygen machine connected to the power outlet of course shut off, forcing me to use the portable tanks of which I had two. I ran out of oxygen on the 3rd day. My brother had to stay up all night to make sure I didn’t stop breathing in the middle of the night and if the power would come back on, he would put the oxygen on me and I couldn’t move from my spot on the couch at all. But then the power stopped coming back on. My mom had to push me into the bathroom in my wheelchair and help transfer me if I needed to go to the bathroom bc without oxygen I couldn’t even stand by myself. It was horrible. On the 4th day, we were getting so cold that we had to risk the drive going to my sister’s house bc amazingly she still had power and I could finally use my oxygen again. It was such a crazy and scary experience to contemplate my possible death on a daily basis that whole time after just surviving being on the ventilator and covid. I’m so glad and thankful that I am still here.
Houstonian here. The deep freeze was completely out of the ordinary. We went 2 days without power (we were lucky). It was the worst power outage I had seen in my 32 years in Houston until Beryl now. Our grid has been extremely fragile since the freeze it wasn’t even this bad power wise for Allison, Ike, & Harvey (other major storms). But Beryl has been the worst there are many people on day 6 with no power. Some have even been told they won’t get power for another week
I live in Austin, was of course here during "snowvid" the week from hell. We lost power and had no water. Filled all containers including trash cans in our home full with snow to melt for flushing toilets. Had snow to melt for drinking water when the power would occasionally come on for brief moments. We had heard the weather was going to get bad, so we did set aside some drinking water, but had no idea how unprepared the utility company was and that we would be without for so long. Texas doesn't have snow plows and the snow was thick. Plus the roads were icy. All generators had sold out in Austin and surrounding areas. It was so cold and primitive feeling. Even once the power came back, stores took a couple of weeks to have even the most basic items back in stock. Austin is a decent size city too, this has never happened here. We have since purchased a generator, but plan to drip faucets and leave town if/when this type of forecast happens again. During the following spring, everyone was urged to put out dishes of sugar water for the bees and hummingbirds because so many plants/flowers didn't survive.
I had been through 2 weeks of flooding and no power in freezing temps after hurricane sandy. But TX 2021 was something else. TX 2021 wasn't single digits it was NEGATIVE 7 in my area. No power for a week and no WATER! We cooked on the grill outside (in the garage with the door open) in negative temps. We boiled snow in the fireplace. We had to do toilet bags. We had to ask the neighbors for wood. We huddled by the fireplace in our living room with 22' ceilings which had no heat retention. And even if you could get out there was nothing to buy. Home depot had cut all wood of every size and sold it. The roads were inpassible and trucks stacked up miles long outside the state. There was no water to buy and we nearly ran out. Even once it started to thaw after a week the frozen pipes burst. It was a 6 week wait for plumbers working 20 hour days. Ercot and their solar and wind initiatives were fully to blame. The articles said we were 4 seconds from a catastrophic failure so they HAD to turn us off to prevent repairs that could take months. We had to beg our friends returning from FL to bring us food and water. It was a total nightmare!!!! You don't realize how fragile it all is until it all fails. I am now learning to prep.
It was bad. I had no power for four days, no rolling blackouts for me. I still have anxiety attacks when my power even blinks or goes off for a few minutes. I was alone with my two cats and we huddled under every single blanket, comforter or quilt I owned. I tried really hard to sleep as much as possible. I had a fireplace but learned when smoke filled my home that a part of it was broken. I actually had to open all my doors and some windows to clear the smoke making my situation much worse and my home even colder. You feel so helpless because there is nothing you can do and we had no idea as to when it would end. We were completely unprepared and our power grid is a joke. We came so close to having no electricity for months. I now own a generator, a snow shovel, stuff to help melt ice on your driveway or side walk, battery powered lanterns, SO many flashlights, emergency radio, scentless candles that will last days, a big stockpile of wood. You get the idea. It caused some real trauma. Our politicians were and are useless and we even had a state senator, Ted Cruz, who got caught flying to Cancun to get away from it all. All that at the end of the video about changes being made and things getting better is a joke. We are still just as likely to have a repeat of the same scenario. Right now with temps around 108 degrees we have a good chance of losing all power again. ERCOT has an app where you can actually see how much energy is available and what the current demand is, those numbers get REALLY close a lot.
My goodness, hopefully it doesnt happen again 🙏🏾
Watching from Galveston Island Texas. Thanks for covering this. It was unbelievable.
My husband and I are from the Northeast. Most houses heat with oil for this reason.
When the storms hit, we had barely moved into our new manufactured home so even we weren't really prepared. Fortunately for us, the power company is a private co-op and was not with Ercot. So we only lost our power for eight hours. My husband was checking the temperature of the water and just before the power came on, I was going out to the RV to get the antifreeze for the S-pipes and toilets.
*We* were fortunate. Not too many other people were.
It was the day after Valentine's Day, so many people who had slept over at their partners' houses were stuck with them for days - including the maintenance officer of my student dorm. He had to walk me through how to shut the main water valve off after 6 pipes broke in the laundry and dormroom areas of the building. It was also still COVID, so we had to figure out how to house the displaced students without having multiple people in close proximity to each other.
My dorm didn't lose power or water, but most of the other student dorms in our non-profit organization did. We created a mutual aid structure in which food was removed from fridges in dorms that had no power and stored outside in "igloos" until they could be picked up by those of us who had AWD vehicles. The food was slowly driven to my dorm and one other that still had power and water, where a team of masked and face-shield wearing students were cooking for 500 and where huge pots of water were boiled day and night (with gas). The boiled water and cooked food was then distributed back to the dorms with no power. Students in exterior rooms who had no power were moved between buildings. Luckily COVID meant our organization had low occupancy and there ended up being enough rooms for all the displaced students. We collected jackets, blankets, food, and water from the dorms and delivered them to a group of homeless people who had taken residence in an empty building nearby.
It was a scary time, but I was proud to see my fellow Texans rise to the occasion
My husband and I have been in Tx for almost 20 years. We BOTH come from snowy climates on the east coast and are used to these conditions. We didn't leave the house.
My town wasn't part of Ercot then, which I am very thankful for. We have since become part of it, but hopefully they are more prepared in case this happens again.
I live in a town outside of Lubbock and while yes, in summer we can get temps up to 114 or so but in the winter we can get snow, icy rains, icy roads, and temps below zero. All 254 counties here in Texas were affected by this. My little town gave out free water. Then ridiculousI just layered so many clothes and used heavy quilts. I had plenty of food so I wasn’t worried about that and there was no place I needed to be that I had to get out on the roads.
Carbon monoxide detectors are not placed in garages or any place that is not living quarters and can be ventilated like a garage.
I will never forget the storm. I was fairly new to Texas, so the freeze threw me off. When the power went out, I remembered my family in Wisconsin stored their food on a screened-in porch. When I asked why, they told me that in the winter, outside was colder than the refrigerator. So when it happened, I put my freezer items in a tub and sat them on my patio. The food in my fridge, I put in my tub and sat it at my front door since it wasn't as cold. At night I had a ton of candles and surrounded them with mirrors, so my room was pretty bright.I just read books.
However, on the last day of the freeze, I went to the grocery store. When the elevator opened, water began pouring in. A pipe burst and the bottom floor was flooded. When I came back, I did not realize that the sidewalk froze. As soon as I stepped up, I fell down hard. When I hit the ground, I knew something happened. I was by myself and no one was outside, so I had to scoot to the drain pipe to pull myself up. It was the longest walk of my life. Every few steps, I had to stop because of the pain. I called the paramedics and they were not going to take me to the hospital. They told me that there was no way I could have walked that far if my leg was broken. They almost convinced me until one of them hit my big toe on accident!! I told them to take me to the hospital. Within 20 minutes the doctor walked in and said, "Yep, you broke your leg!"
I waited until I was 50 and broke my first one! LOL
It can get pretty cold in north Texas, and I've seen it ice over for several days before, but this was insane. And it wasn't just north Texas this time, it wa pretty much the entire state. I lived in Houston for a decade, and I saw snow once, for about ten minutes before it melted. This would be akin to an F5 tornado hitting L.A.
Southern States are just not equipped to handle cold. Georgia had a freeze one year during rush hour. Cars were stuck on the Interstate and people had to walk to safety. It costs too much to keep all the equipment and stuff for ice. We just shut down when we hear ice or snow is coming. We had a storm a few years ago and we had no power for a week. Thank God we had a fireplace. Snow is something we don't want!!
We were pissed! In Texas, we are used to the blistering heat. Not the severe freeze. My friend in Minnesota said she was running to the store in waist-high snow like it was nothing that day. ERCOT told us there would be 'rolling blackouts' that would only last 'half an hour so' as not to put a 'strain on the entire grid.' When our power went off, we waited and waited and then realized the power was not coming back on again. Our HOA president was a hero. Sam and several men were out for hours and hours helping neighbors. That's TEXAS! Neighbors that had generators invited neighbors over. Everyone brought food from their freezers. We played cards and ate stew. If you had gas, you were okay during the day. But when it was time to sleep, we had to turn the gas off. After it was all over, we have attorneys in the neighborhood that make sure our politicians heard.
We got lucky, and only lost power for about an hour or so. We were without running water for 2 or 3 days, but we had water stocked up, so we were okay. We got 6" of snow here, and we normally only get snow about once a decade. Temperature dropped to -6 F (about -21 C), whereas normally the lowest temperature we get during winter is just below 20 F (about -6.6 C).
Texas I’m the summer is like 100-110 usually….
Our winters can be bipolar but sometimes that jet stream dips low and stays and we aren’t as prepared for that….
I was lucky as my power didn’t stay off for too long.
💯
I live in North east Texas and definitely remember this. We didn't have it super bad like some cities did but we got the most snow I've ever seen in my life time and the lowest temperatures ever.Just about all stores closed except emergency services and I had to work being an ekg tech at the hospital. It was crazy. Got tons of pictures..ill never forget it.
Plano, Texas here. I was working at a grocery store. Shelves were empty, and we closed after us ice skating trying to get the carts... because a closed store has that to be worried about
I was without power for 4 days. But it cycled off and on for a while. It would be on for about 10 minutes, then off for several hours. We had food, but the greatest battle was staying warm. We had a gas fireplace but it only kept the room we were in slightly warm. The rest of the house dropped to below freezing. Keeping the water pipes from freezing was also a big deal for many. We knew the forecast showed warmer temps coming but not soon enough. We were going to have to ride it out for a minimum of 4 days.
I live in the Fort Worth area and worked in Dallas at the time. I remember a scary drive to work one morning and I received a panicked text from my mom asking if I was okay and if I made it to work okay. I was confused. 2 hours later I saw the news about the accident and understood my mom thought I was in the 100+ car pile up. My bosses realized how unsafe driving was and told me not to come back until the temperature rose and the roads were safe. We were lucky to not lose power. Very fortunate. But, the water pipes did burst in our apartment building and we were without water for days. It was a crazy situation to see. I still have pictures of grocery store shelves completely bare. As for the roads, many don't realize that a fair bit of the road ways are elevated. You know when you drive over a bridge it'll say it might freeze so watch for ice. Because of this, the roads get black ice fast. I lived in Seattle, I spent a winter in Wyoming, so I have experience whereas many from Texas have far less severe winter weather driving experience. So it doesn't matter if you have mad skills driving on those roads, cause the person next to sure as hell doesn't!
It was a mess. It was a complete clusterfvck.
I remember that fire, it happened in the town I live in, you could see the smoke rising from all over the town.
We live a few states north of Texas. When their power grid went down, ours had to kick in to help. We were dealing with blackouts and the wind chill was like 45 below zero here. Crazy.
Ahhhh, the year of snovid (snow + covid) We were without power for 17 hours. My family's savibg grace was that fuzzy blankets are my love language 🤣
The worst part was that I have medication that had to be refrigerated
“Texas Snowmageddon” we were lucky. We lived with family at the time. My dad’s house had a gas fireplace and stove so we could still cook and huddle by the fire. When we had no water we had to melt snow. But my husband’s parents still had water on and off so we trecked over there for the last bit of it.
Oh ...& You're right....we usually deal with extreme heat. We've had 117°F heat index (feels like) weather since before May.
I live in San Antonio. I'm in my 60's and I have lived here all my life. I can count on one hand how many times we have had snow. When we do get snow it's gone very quickly. This was very different. For the record the Panhandle and greater Dallas / Fort Worth area do get winter weather just about every year. Our city was shut down for about a week. We lost power in out house and it 40 degrees inside. It we slept on the floor of our living in sleeping bags in front of the fireplace. During the day we would sit in our in the driveway with the engine running and the heater turned on. That was how we kept warm briefly during the day. We would also charge our cell phones during this time. It is very expensive to retro-fit utilities for winter weather. In South Texas there is less that a four percent chance of such an event happening. We gambled and lost. In the aftermath, the highest priority was upgrading with water utilities. We did have issues with water pumps going down.
Right now it all seems like such a distant memory. We in very brutal Summer right now. We could use some rain. No Hurricanes please. Best of luck to my friends in Houston that just took a hit from Hurricane Beryl.
I will *NEVER* forget Cancun Cruz.
West Texas gal here! We are prepared for SOME snow and ice, but mainly the heat. Our power grid wasn't prepared for any of that! I live near an air force base, so we never lost power, but many of my family did. I had Rubbermaid tubs of show melting for bathroom needs. My 2 kiddos were champs, and we managed to stay in layers to keep the heater from being overworked. Our neighbors had huge pickup trucks and would make grocery runs, bring free water, and take people to warming centers. It was so scary, but everyone pulled together. The school I work at had a washer and dryer, and the principal offered for us to bring laundry since so many had pipes that burst.
San Antonian here. It was a nightmare. I never lost power at my apartment but didn't have water for almost two weeks because so many pipes burst at the complex. So I stayed with friends but they didn't have power initially. The nights were miserably cold. The roads were treacherous. The winters since "snowvid" have been scary. I never want to experience that again.
Just East of Dallas here. Worked at a hospital in Tyler. Went in and stayed there for 3 days. Took me 4 hours to drive 50 miles home from work when I finally left. Slept there, and it was COLD, even inside. The roads were so bad that we couldn't discharge patients to home for 3 days.
I remember that, I have a gas stove so I did alot of baking and the stove on helped keep it warm. We were worried mostly about pipes breaking, we kept the water running slowly so the pipes didn't burst.
I felt bad for everyone in Texas. Living all over I have just learned a variety of preparedness options for different weather and cold without power is one of the toughest situations and they had no experience in what to do.
I live in North Texas and was recovering from cancer surgery I just had the week before. One of our pipes in our utility room burst and flooded that room and the kitchen. I was in no shape to do very much and my husband had to do it all, plus take care of me. We ended up having to shut off the water. We relied on bottled water (luckily we had plenty thanks to stockpiling a lot during my 5 months of chemo). We were also lucky we never lost power like a lot of people did. Our block is on the same grid as the fire station down the street. If you were lucky enough to have a fire station or hospital nearby, you probably didn't lose power. Our furnance runs on natural gas so we had heat the entire time. We could also cook on our gas cooktop. I don't know what we would have done if we had no electricity or a more severe pipe burst. Over 700 people died as a result of the storm and the grid failure, but I don't know if the State of Texas has ever put out a number that really reflects how much people suffered. (One man, a flower vendor, froze to death in the room he rented in Dallas. His story just haunts me.) The storm uncovered how the power companies invest as little as possible into the grid/power stations (it would cut into profits to upgrade power stations and lines for storms that might only happen once every 50 to 100 years by old style conventional thinking. These are not coventional times.). Companies should not get away with doing as little as possible because it hurts the bottom line, profits, and shareholder interests. It's not right because people end up paying the price in the end. That needs to change or else we will see more of this. We are already did with the Centerpoint failure with Hurricane Beryl in Houston just this mornth (July 2024).
Dallas here…..I lost so much mature landscaping during this freeze….some things 25+ years old. The unusual thing about this freeze was that it got below freezing and stayed there. Typically in Texas, it will get cold enough to sleet or snow overnight, then warm up just enough to melt it during the day. But this event stayed way below freezing and our infrastructure is not built for that. I saw it coming and put in for time off from work, so was able to drip my faucets and avoid a broken pipe disaster.
I live in Laredo, TX where highway I35 begins. I remember how cold it got that winter. Even here some parts of the city had outages and even our water pipes froze so that meant no running water. Luckily the water got restored after 1 and a half day. Still one of the most bizarre things that I experienced here in Texas after the whole world shut down during the pandemic of 2020.
It was pretty intense. We got lucky that we didn't lose power (we live behind a hospital and are on the same grid as it) but our heater went out it got down to 5c in the house. with our gas fire places keeping the parlor and bathroom warm. we set up box fans to push the warm air around the house.
It was also the first time we had friends over since covid started - I took the truck and picked people up, and our house ended up full with air mattresses and people. We thankfully have gas stove/oven so we were able to cook and boil water. The water went out city wide, and we got to -18c outside. We also pay more year round for electricity to have a flat rate, so we didn't get screwed like a lot of people did.
By the end of it we got 14 inches of snow (35ish cm)
Our houses are also built to protect against heat and release heat instead of hold onto it, so it's harder to keep the house warm in the winter. Usually we don't freeze, or have much of a freeze in the winter, so this was definitely out of the ordinary.
In the North they are experienced with driving in ice, sleet, and snow, they also have supplies such as salt and sand for the roads.
I'm watching this as we move into day 5 of no power from Hurricane Beryl.
Fallen tree unfortunately took landed on my generator.
But spared the house.
During Winter Storm Yuri, we were without power for almost 5 days, I think. The days kinda blurred together.
I had my wife and our son stay at her parents property across the street since they have propane heat, and I stayed at our property.
I can handle both extreme temps, especially since I built a fire in our backyard and cook various meals.
Because we live in a rural area of Montgomery County, we have well and septic system.
The video and images really don't do justice to what we experienced.
I didn't have any power outages for that storm and considered myself lucky about that. Unfortunately on Wednesday it heated up above single digits for a few hours and then my damn pipe burst in the laundry room because the pipes were in the ceiling next to the breezeway to the garage and it froze up but defrosted for a while, causing the copper pipe to burst. So for the rest of the week we had power but no water. It sucked. Plus rather than hot weather I'm used to after a natural disaster like a hurricane, we had freezing weather. It was miserable.
We were living in Frisco (northern DFW) at the time and remember this like it was yesterday. The blackouts would last well over an hour and the power would come back for MAYBE 15 minutes. We lived on the third floor of an apartment building and had our 1 year old bundled up. It was freezing in the apartment and everything was pitch black except some random businesses and stop lights. Fire trucks were parked at some of the main intersections waiting to respond if they needed to. Thank God my father in law lived near a hospital and had power. What was normally a half hour drive took nearly 2 hours and we stayed there comfortably for 4 days until everything had been restored. It was INSANE. I’ll just add that Texans don’t really have or need heavy winter coats because for the most part our winters are mild/moderate with freezing temps not lasting for more than a week at a time. Also, many homes here don’t have fireplaces so there wasn’t a way for our household in particular to stay warm. It truly was a state of emergency.
I lived in Lewisville at that time. I lived onsite the property that i worked at, several of us employees did, and we had to walk the property every night for a fire watch because two of our sprinkler lines had frozen and burst. Luckily our power didnt go out.
Texas is quite a sizable state as you know. I live in Amarillo which is basically in the middle of the Texas Panhandle(the square shape at the top of Texas). Normally we get much worse winter weather than south Texas. I have seen a true blizzard, and got stuck at work more than once due to ice and snow.
We live in Austin, the Capitol of Texas, and we were here in during the big freeze. We were very lucky to be living in a newer house with great insulation and a natural gas fireplace and stove. We also have a large spa/hot tub holding several hundred gallons of water. We had multiple gasoline generators that refused to start at 7 degrees Fahrenheit. With the vented fireplace and Partly vented stove we never got super cold inside. To use the toilet I had to carry 5 gallon buckets of water from the hot tub outside through the length of the house. I also own quite a few battery powered tools so I had several lanterns and flashlights so we always had light and a charge for our phones. Phones didn’t matter much though. We lost internet and cell signal as soon as the power went out. After two days the electricity and phone signal would come back once or twice a day for a few minutes. The signal was very weak and slow but it allowed us to text our children who were at their university. They were very lucky and had intermittent power the entire time. They lost their water on day three but had some warning and filled their tubs which got them through the next two days. Now we have a very expensive home backup generator powered by natural gas. We have multiple electric heaters and a pump to move water from the hot tub to the toilets. I doubt that the state is really prepared if something like this happens again. The Republican Party, which controls the state, is heavily funded and aligned with the oil and gas industry. This is not conducive, IMO, to effective regulation of industries that don’t really want to spend their money preparing for disasters that may never happen.
We were without electricity and water for almost 2 weeks. Thankfully, I have a wood burning fire place and we use it to keep warm n even cook
There's a general understanding: North of Interstate 20 does get some snow, etc, during winter. Anything south of that not so much.
This was by far the worst storm i can remember in tx. We lost water day 3 or 4 into. We were still going into work through most of this. We worked retail at the time sooo yeah that was bs. We never lost power luckily but at that time i lived across the street from a sub station. Without power we would have lost most of our pets for sure. I remember being at work when the wreck on 35 happened, so many customers of mine who were nurses just rushing to it or the hospitals. The whole area of dfw just felt off and dystopian. Then when it got warmer all the pipes busting in homes and mains busting the roads complicated things as it would freeze overnight.