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2021-2022 Texas Winter Weather Thread

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Judge Roybeanbag
Judge Roybeanbag

Speaking of I probably shouldn’t share this story but I’m gonna anyway.  After a breakfast of some yogurt, a granola bar and some leftover garlic cheese grits, I was playing with my grandson in the ga

Brisketexan
Brisketexan

All day pot of red beans: Love a bowl of RBAR on a cold day.

phdhorn
phdhorn

Update: Uggh! A little long (per usual) but the situation calls for it. Basically, as I said above, it's Tuesday morning, within about 48 hrs. of the event, which is when models get better (er, m

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Gardner Barnes

Gardner Barnes 1,562

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yeah, it's colder'n fuck up here. 14 degrees at my house. Slight frozen rain/ sleet/ wintry mix overnight but nothing substantial.  Chance of snow this afternoon.
Bring it.
We have tortellini soup on, fridge full of beer. Cabinet full of bourbon, and football all day.
Still cold as hell outside.
Edit: flurries starting now...

I think this the first time in shaggy history I’m
Jealous of slorch
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Guest

Guest

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That sucks to hear.

Posted it in another thread, but on Friday, we drove 120miles  down to my mom's house by LBK and a big factor was the scenario you describe. There's no way my (dipshit) brother who lives with her would have prepped the outside of the house for this cold snap.  Sure enough, the faucet covers I had used last season were still in the garage and one hose was still hooked up in front yard.

Then yesterday, I still had to text him and made sure they left the kitchen faucet dripping, as it is on an outer wall.

Cold temps most definitely require some prep for vehicles and structures of you don't want broken, leaky stuff when it warms back up.

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

Posted
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If you have any whiskey that I can grab outside, I'll happily swing by and cover your faucets.  Must exercise the gaskets, George! 

Also folks, remember to shut off your sprinkler system at the source if you haven't already.  Another hard freeze tonight.  

I should probably go up and check the attic for proactive purposes.  But I'm lazy today.  

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Pato del Muerto

Pato del Muerto 52,507

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I went out to Home Depot today in a long sleeve shirt, shorts, and slides.  Saw tough Texans bundled up in their cold weather hunting gear or buried in giant coats and scarves and shit. 
 

yeah the wind made it cold but come on. You are walking 100 feet from your car to a store. The people out walking dogs, I get that. 

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6,224

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If the sun looks like it's going to crash into the earth today, and it's terrifyingly larger than normal, don't worry about it.  Today earth is at perihelion.  So the sun is about 3 million miles closer to us than average.  I expect the global wildfires to start shortly after noon, the oceans to dry up, and all life to burn up.  But I could have forgotten to carry the 5.

As you know and have recited daily, the earth: 1) orbits the sun in an elliptic, and not circular path, and; 2) the sun isn't quite at the center of the elliptic cigar... it's a bit to the side ("left to right").  So the earth just swung by its nearest point in the year shortly after 1:45 a.m. this morning.  I've heard that the entire Asian side was obliterated and we were lucky to be on the night side, but haven't yet confirmed, that, waiting for official Reddit confirmation.

FYI, the earth reaches its perihelion on July 4 this year.  The sun will turn into a white dwarf and earth will freeze to near absolute zero.  However, a good 15K generator plus gas space heaters planted all over the house should work fine to alleviate any problems with being a bit chily.

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Captain Ron

Captain Ron 12,883

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On 1/2/2022 at 9:39 AM, phdhorn said:

Wind-caused.  Not a grid issue, which there won't be with this event.

 

Yes ... but ..?

I'm seeing some reports that there were production issues for natural gas that were the beginnings of last year's problems. Clearly it wasn't on the same scale, but this should be a warning

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-03/plunging-gas-supplies-show-texas-still-hasn-t-prepared-for-cold?fbclid=IwAR0E0Jzo7x1-ZxGQT1YZJB_HrYOzPuiXoeSv5p0focBGwsJWU6qiBcEYtVU


 

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Captain Ron

Captain Ron 12,883

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From up here in the Northeast ...

We were in Vermont for the New Year's holiday. The place we were at had a weather station. It dropped down the day after we left (overnight Sunday-Monday):

image.png.6c99b89185bcfb4b1f7e4745ea00c871.png

 

And the forecast up there for next week ....

image.png.25d5237bcde71f0011f358be954bb92a.png

We aren't much better in metro Boston that day, high of 16, low of 9.

While it's been cold here, overall we've been higher than normal. There haven't been the string of days that don't get above freezing, so we've got that going for us.

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45,691

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4 hours ago, Captain Ron said:

 

Yes ... but ..?

I'm seeing some reports that there were production issues for natural gas that were the beginnings of last year's problems. Clearly it wasn't on the same scale, but this should be a warning

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-03/plunging-gas-supplies-show-texas-still-hasn-t-prepared-for-cold?fbclid=IwAR0E0Jzo7x1-ZxGQT1YZJB_HrYOzPuiXoeSv5p0focBGwsJWU6qiBcEYtVU


 

Oh good

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6,224

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On 1/5/2022 at 12:26 PM, Captain Ron said:

Yes ... but ..?

I'm seeing some reports that there were production issues for natural gas that were the beginnings of last year's problems. Clearly it wasn't on the same scale, but this should be a warning

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-03/plunging-gas-supplies-show-texas-still-hasn-t-prepared-for-cold?fbclid=IwAR0E0Jzo7x1-ZxGQT1YZJB_HrYOzPuiXoeSv5p0focBGwsJWU6qiBcEYtVU

That article (now behind a paywall to me) was terribly written and seemed like nothing more than a political cheerlead.  However, I did see a similar article from a Houston TV web site that was better:

https://www.click2houston.com/news/texas/2022/01/05/texas-natural-gas-production-dropped-during-recent-cold-front-reviving-concerns-about-electric-grid/

This subject is mostly political and is being discussed (although inappropriately in a DT thread) about a grid burp this past summer) elsewhere.  However I can say two things:

1) The grid system absolutely needs more fixin', but it'll take time.  And I think they'll get there.  But anyone who thinks "it's all better" is off the mark.  However I do think some improvements have been made since last year - and not just ERCOT.  The power companies were also majorly at fault, and though they seem to have skated under from much of the blame that ERCOT's gotten, they're quietly wiping their foreheads and understanding they sucked and BADLY, at managing what power ERCOT could provide.  Anyway call me naive, but I do believe steps were taken to improve things.  But it's gonna take longer than 10 months to get it done.

2) It won't matter much this winter anyway, because I'd be willing to bet the family Labrador that there's no way we'll have a NINE-day 24/7 freeze in several lifetimes soon.  Of course what happened last year wasn't normal - the polar breakout happens a lot, it's just that last year it was an extremely rare blast that we were in the bullseye (99% of the time the earth's rotation causes those things to dive more east of us, into the NE U.S.).  Of course past performance is in no way a guarantee of future results, but the grid should expect maybe at worst a 3-day freeze - for the northern and central parts of Texas.  Will it hold up for just that?  I think so.  Could a mega-freeze happen again?  Always the (microscopic) chance.  So yeah, we should prepare as if it can and will.  But now people freak out when a completely normal freeze forecast (1-2 overnights in a row) is called for our area.  

Since this is mainly a weather and not political thread, I'm staying away from that, except to say I don't blame people as much as others.  It's like "why didn't you prepare for that meteor that hit Houston???!?!?!" because chances were only slightly more that that weather event would happen here.   Nevertheless, although those provider stations esp. in N. Texas won't "need" that upgraded equipment much at all for the next decade, they need to have it.  Because now everyone knows what "no power" means in the winter.

The rest is politics, which frankly, fuck all that.

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105,152

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16 minutes ago, texasdago said:

Ones hopes that the people in charge will eventually stop messing with the politics and just get stuff done.

Yep.  I mean, we chose a particular kind of power market a while back.  There are other types out there that are better equipped at avoiding disastrous outcomes.  None of them are PERFECT, but we chose a market that disincentivizes any extra capacity.  The outcome here was predictable and predicted.

Oh, and check out projections on load growth and available generation for the coming several years.  Hold onto your butts.  This is the market working as designed, and it's going to work EXACTLY as designed for some time.  BUT...back to the weather....let's hope we don't have another extended cold snap this year (although my "use a small downstairs room with a fireplace as a lifeboat" plan is coming along nicely).

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6,224

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27 minutes ago, texasdago said:

Ones hopes that the people in charge will eventually stop messing with the politics and just get stuff done.

Yeah, but doubtful.  Nevertheless some progress was made.

SB3 requires upgrades for power producers and transmission lines to be upgraded.  But that costs $ and as almost always the case with infrastructure, funding is yet to be clearly defined.  But compliance isn't required until later this year.  The legislation also left out natural gas suppliers, which only requires upgrading if deemed necessary by regulators (which is actually a good move, because it's realistic).  They were able to raise about $6.5B in bonds to help electric companies upgrade (which will be passed on to consumers, both business and residential).  It also has a provision to increase bills by a few $/mo. (not fully implemented yet) to pay back the losses to the companies (which is frustrating at least but probably necessary).  And the current myriad of lawsuits going on doesn't help much either.  It's still a fairly decent CF but progress has been made, if not ideal.  What happened last winter was almost inconceivable, but now it is.  We've been lucky actually that it hasn't happened more (we had a number of big, long freezes dive east of us though the last decade, which is the norm, while we get the western edge - shorter, less frigid freezes).

The other big bill (SB2) pretty much reorganizes ERCOT.  That one was easier to implement.

Like most stuff though, it costs $ to fix.  Where is it coming from?  That's not yet settled.
I do think the intent, if not the follow-through, is good though.  Of course "follow through" can't pay for stuff.

The other thing I haven't heard a peep of out of any politician, either side of the aisle, is the effect of Texas' light-speed growing population.  We have like 50% more customers (residential and commercial) than we had say 50 years ago, and certainly about half of that within the last 30 years.  That's a lot of extra power demand.  I don't know what's being done to address that - I guess someone's figured it out and calculated it, but I haven't seen pop. growth as a factor in the power void last Feb.  But it certainly played a part.

We'll see.  Meanwhile hopefully La Niña will make freezes less frequent and long this winter.  I think, but can't be sure, that the system will mostly work with a "normal" winter.  If we have a super-freeze again, I seriously doubt it.  But unlike last winter, when the length and severity of the freeze was definitely missed (not forecast, even up to the day before - no one called for those extra 3-4 freezing days before the "expected" freeze and snowstorm), and with good reason, the next one will hopefully see more residents' prep (new generators, etc.).

But Rome wasn't built in a day, blah blah blah.  I guess I can hope.

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6,224

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... and while I'm here, to turn back to weather (thankfully!) the question might be about the likelihood of a vortex or "polar piece" breaking off.  Put very simply, this needs two components:  1) the formation of a strengthened core of polar air; and 2) a forced interruption of high pressure systems into the pole to disturb and dislodge some of this cold air.  La Niña years encourage these - but mostly a colder, wetter upper U.S.  Any polar air as normal slides east of Texas mostly, as indeed happened in the La Niña stretches of 2005-12 (multiple winters, various strengths), and 2016-18).  And indeed 2020 was in the midst of the current La Niña, which has been weak to moderate.  This year the La Niña is actually a little stronger, but the winter has been warm here.  In fact polar releases are behind schedule, although the last 2-3 cold outbreaks saw a few of them, but these have remained mostly in Canada or the northern U.S.

So 1) has happened, but 2) is still up in the air (pun intended).

The winds circling the cold polar core have held up more than expected, prohibiting large outbreaks of this rather strong core to drop off.  It's like a cell wall protecting the nucleus, and disallowing invaders behind its "fort."  The outbreaks some forecast for the last week of Dec. into this week haven't been as  strong and southerly.

So, in other words, this year is holding up sort of normally.  Cold air remains north, or is displaced mostly into the NE U.S. (and maybe into the Southeast).

The science with all this is complex and intricate, but if you want I can post graphs and pictures and stuff to make it look pretty.  But for now, the winter for us is "will the cold plunge here or is there enough La Niña stuff pushing it back north to largely spare us?"

The answer - so far - is the latter.

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texasdago

texasdago 7,573

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Thank you for that insight.  At this point, here's where I am...

 

1) we need more rain - might be screwed

2) send more snow to my preferred ski resort... lots of it... except when I am there and I prefer bluebird skies all week, please.

3) glad I just picked up a quarter-cord of wood.

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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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January and February are typically our driest months in Central Texas, no?  

We are starting to fall behind a bit more than I'd like overall though.  

This La Nina thing may keep us from freezing for long periods, but could she spare some more rain?  

Hopefully long-range forecasts for March and April look wet and mild, because I'm too lazy to fix my sprinkler system by myself.  

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