In Frigid Texas A ‘Last Resort’ Move to Save Power
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A 2,000-mile long winter storm dropping snow and ice also sent temperatures plunging across the southern Plains, prompting a power emergency in Texas a day after conditions canceled flights and impacted traffic across large swaths of the US, and Texans don’t know how to act.
Inevitable power outages, albeit rotating, were initiated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, early Monday morning, meaning hundreds of thousands went without electricity for short periods as temperatures fell into the teens near Dallas and 20s around Houston.
“We urge Texans to put safety first,” ERCOT tweeted as it urged residents to reduce electricity use. The council manages the flow of electric power in the state.
“Traffic lights and other infrastructure may be temporarily without power,” the council said.
The council described the rotating outages as a “last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole,” adding that utility transmission companies are tasked with determining how to reduce demand on the system.
Nearly 2.6 million customers in Texas were in the dark as of 8:20 am local time, according to poweroutage.us, a utility tracking site. By midmorning, 3,000 flights had been canceled across the country, about 1,600 of them at Dallas/Fort Worth International and Bush Intercontinental airports in Texas.
At DFW, the temperature was 4 degrees Fahrenheit, 3 degrees colder than Moscow. Up to 12 inches of snow was expected across parts of the southern Plains into Monday, along with accumulating ice.
Edited via Newser.
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Back in the early 80s, I was in Huston on business. They were having an unusual cold spell and suddenly there was a light sprinkling of snow on the grassy areas. You’d have thought the air raid siren had gone off. Office buildings emptied out. Elevators were jammed and even 20 floors up, through think glass you could hear the screeching of spinning wheels as cars slowly drifted around and into each other, panicked feet pressing pedals to the metal. You’re right – they’re not used to that kind of shit.
Texans aren’t used to this shit.