Southeast Texas?

We just got power back after 7 1/2 days without it. Ice Storm last Saturday knocked out 80% of the grid for our electric co-op. (Southside Electric Co-operative). One county over the devastation is incredible. 18 poles down on one road due to a big tree falling over. Some folks may not have power for another 2 weeks!!!! Slipped on the ice that morning and crushed my new phone as well.:mad: Thankfully I have a wood stove for backup. Had plenty of wood and cooked lots of hot dogs and beans on the stove. :) Hardest part was there was so little to do especially at night. Seriously thinking about a integrated generator now. Just hate spending the money.
 
I feel for you, Chris. Glad it's over for you. Those generators are really nice to have. My mom's power and water were out for 4 days, but my sister (who lives next door) had a generator so she stayed over there. I don't know what she would have done without it. I wouldn't be surprised if my brother in law gets his own well put in just because of this.
 
Chris, now i want a hotdog :)

Whole house auto generator a guy like me (paraplegic) needs. Down here our power drops for a few seconds almost daily during summer storms. I have battery backups on tv stereo pc (a must) bedroom tv, another i keep off & charged to put on my electric bed after hurricanes so i can turn it on/off just to use bed. 1/2 dozen good lithium ion flashlights, and a gas 8kw gen to babysit as it runs backfeeding house during day. Woke to sweet gas smell once, the friggin float valve puked (gen was off) and with no power i was out in dark ripping up patio carpet carefully soaked with garden hose first. Not fun!

I gotta see what burrying a huge propane tank & gen system cost. I want full auto.

And thank goodness some of you have water & electric back on. No water must be beyond horrible.
 
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Not having water was the worst. Had filled 3 five gallon buckets the night before, and I have a couple of leaky spots on the gutters on the deck so we put buckets there and collected a lot of melting ice. Had another storm Wednesday and collected more then. It was rough. Losing a week of work sucked as well. No power in my garage so there was really nothing I could do in it.
I gotta tell you I was very glad to see the Line Crew. Guys did a great job, had to replace the pole and transformer in our backyard. Hard part was folks across the road and down the road had power since Monday, because of that pole my house and 3 others had to wait until today. That was hard knowing it was so close yet so far away.:) Just happy it's back on and I don't have to chunk the stove every three hours trying to keep everyone warm.:)
 
Y'all had in Texas what they used to call a "blue norther". Least that's what I remember my Dad calling those cold spells, But those usually happened in early January, so who knows.:) Hope all you Texans are getting through it OK.
 
I'm pretty sure some heads will roll (maybe not the right ones) over this deal. We have enough power to run millions of air conditioners (all electric) on full blast all summer, but they keep talking about the demand causing this. I would guess 75% of the homes have gas heat, so there is no way the demand was even close to mid summer levels. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is the overseer of the generation side and assured the governor they were prepared 5 days before the storm. Every type of generation had problems, but the wind and solar shut down completely, which I understand is anywhere from 10-25% of the generation, depending on who is talking. I know the widespread cold was unprecedented, but not unforseeable. Amarillo, Tx. is closer to Colorado than Austin, which is in the middle of the state. So the northern half sees this type cold every year. Way more questions than answers, at this point, but hopefully they figure out what happened and make sure it never happens again.
 
I cant imagine not having power for over 7 days, not only for my own house but for where I work that would be a total disaster. I feel for you guys going through this mess.

One of our local electric coop's gets power from the same generation that also supplies parts of Texas, they put out a plea to anyone that could generate power to do so. Several towns in my area have stand by generators to power the town as well as some excess. Rumor is that one of them made enough generating the last few days to buy a totally new plant with cash.

Another local news article I read said our area hasn't had rolling black outs to shed load in over 80 years. It seems like way to many of these 80 to 100 year events are happening to be comfortable anymore, hopefully we are about done catching up.
 
I cant imagine not having power for over 7 days, not only for my own house but for where I work that would be a total disaster. I feel for you guys going through this mess.

One of our local electric coop's gets power from the same generation that also supplies parts of Texas, they put out a plea to anyone that could generate power to do so. Several towns in my area have stand by generators to power the town as well as some excess. Rumor is that one of them made enough generating the last few days to buy a totally new plant with cash.

Another local news article I read said our area hasn't had rolling black outs to shed load in over 80 years. It seems like way to many of these 80 to 100 year events are happening to be comfortable anymore, hopefully we are about done catching up.
Yes couple years ago the Brazos river which is about 4 miles from my house reached some 500yr flood level...wtf
 
I just read on fox, some people in TX were powering their houses with the new F150 with the work generator built-in.
Who would have thunk? Get idea!
I saw that too, looks like 2021 F-150's and up have the option of a 2kw all the way up to a 7kw generator. Hmmmm my 2019 is looking kind old now :)
 
This was taken 2-15-21 by my helper. I couldn't get there for 3 days because of the roads.
IMG_20210215_082721.jpg
 
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In upstate New York that wouldn't be enough snow to justify closing schools. LOL
Having lived in Texas previously I understand how much of a problem bad weather can be.
It's the same thing here in Arizona.

I'm sure the biggest issue was the power outages.
 
In upstate New York that wouldn't be enough snow to justify closing schools. LOL
Having lived in Texas previously I understand how much of a problem bad weather can be.
It's the same thing here in Arizona.

I'm sure the biggest issue was the power outages.
Snow is fairly easy to drive on, it's the idiots in Texas who drive terrible no matter the conditions add any sort of weather to that and it's super dangerous :) Also to me a big problem is that we just don't get snow, usually it's coupled with ice. This past week was different, but even when the temp was well below zero we had some sunny days and the snow started to melt only to refreeze in to ice at night. There's my less than 0.02's worth LOL
 
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