Hi everyone! The weather is shifting back to a more normal pattern. Power is on here although people in Houston are still having outages. Homes in Southern Texas are built for the heat, not the cold and there's a lot of busted plumbing from freezing pipes in this recent winter storm.
Complicating everything is the ice on the roads. Texas is huge state, 2nd biggest after Alaska. It takes two days to cross this state by car. Its hard to appreciate how spread out everything is. Unlike Arizona where I grew up, the Federal Government doesn't own 95% of this state. Its all ranches and privately owned. Its bigger than most countries are. Trucking plays a very big role here in getting food to the markets and if you can't get traction to move an 18 wheel truck nobody gets fed. Grocery stores shifted to Japanese style just in time delivery years ago, very little food is warehoused for very long by the grocery store chains.
Fortunately today was fairly warm and much of the snow melted, at least in the Texas Hill Country Highland Lakes area.
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| No produce or bread in sight at Walmart today 2/19/2021 |
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| Empty Deli aisle in Walmart 2/19/2021 |
Signal conversation with Carl in the UK:
February 18, 2021
Carl: Hey Bill. All ok there? I heard a few things that Texas was having really bad weather and utilities were off. Is it all sorted now? And was there more to it?
Thu 1:09pm
Terran: Oh we had rotating blackouts since Sunday night. Power would come on for 40-60 minutes and then go off for 2-3 hours at a time. Just enough to keep the house in the 50s-60s range. But not fully warmed and not able to wash clothes, wash dishes or take showers. It was bitterly cold 9F (-13C) Sunday night and 19 F (-7 C) the rest of the week. During the day it’s getting up to 32F (0C) so we see some melting on roads and in the sunshine
Thu 3:58pm
Terran: Power came back last night and has stayed on
Thu 3:59pm
Terran: It’s supposed to be 45 F (7 C) tomorrow
Thu 3:59pm
Terran: There were nights and days the only place warm was under the blankets with the cat huddle closely
Thu 4:00pm
Terran: Roads were impassible, local grocery stored was empty as trucks could not travel on the roads. Ice was everywhere, trees, roads, power lines. It was a very dangerous situation
Thu 4:02pm
Carl: Sounds really bad. It seemed strange it was Texas after Texas involvement over Trump and dominion
Thu 4:03pm
Terran: I kept think about that warning the British govt gave about freezing that Simon Parkes talked about. We had no warning or time to prepare
Thu 4:03pm
Terran: Someone steered the polar jet stream
Thu 4:04pm
Carl: HAARP more like
Thu 4:04pm
Terran: There was ice in Mexico!
Thu 4:04pm
Terran: Roads are getting better they put sand on bridges and dangerous parts but speed is greatly reduced
Thu 4:05pm
Carl: The world is upside down mate
Thu 4:06pm
Terran: Bigger stores are open as are DIY places so people can’t get stuff for plumbing repairs etc. there’s going to be a lot of broken pipes because they just don’t build for that kind of cold here.
Thu 4:07pm
February 19, 2021
Carl: Is it all still snowed up?
Thu 4:08pm
Terran: Yes about 4 inches of snow on the ground much of that will melt off tomorrow
Thu 4:08pm
Terran: Worst is over. It did expose a flaw in the Texas electrical grid which needs to be fixed. Texas has a stand alone electrical grid and is not able to import large amounts of power from other states
Thu 4:10pm
Terran: They are blaming the problem on frozen windmills in west Texas (11% of power) but this was a shortage of 20-30%
Thu 4:12pm
Terran: Some natural gas plants couldn’t fire up. Frozen cooling plants? Steam generation requires a temp differential
Thu 4:13pm
Terran: There’s going to be heavy political fallout over this
Thu 4:13pm
Terran: Left is spinning this as climate change
Thu 4:14pm
