At Least 8 Dead, Dozens Hurt as ‘Sheets of Ice' Bring Chaos to North Texas Roadways

There was an over one hundred car pileup in Dallas this morning resulting in five dead. This weather is heading towards Houston where even fewer people know what to do. The weatherguessers are saying it will likely have a similar effect to a hurricane in regards to insurance claims.
-Blast

Yeesh! Nasty. Freezing rain is the worst. Even Canadians with snow/ice tires think twice about heading onto the highway. Stay home if you can.

Yikes! Freezing rain is the worst. About ten years ago when I lived in Sioux Falls, SD we got the mother of all freezing rain storms. Tens of thousands of trees were damaged from just a few limbs to splitting all the way to the ground; it took the city two and a half years to clear all the downed wood! That was about the worst road conditions I've ever seen but visually it was stunningly beautiful in a few areas. It was like the city was made of glass!

A few days ago I saw a post on a gardening forum about trying to protect plants from the heat in TX. I imagine that problem has been temporarily solved and replaced with a newer, more serious one.

FWIW, we've been hit with a nasty blast of Arctic cold too. It's slowly moderating; when I got up this morning, the wind chill was only -44C. Much more reasonable than earlier in the week. (I can dress for the cold, but the wind makes it bloody miserable to be outside.)

Latest update, the pre-mixed bottle of margaritas I set on the back porch has about 1/4" of ice on it. Houston roads are shut but people are still going around the freeway onramp blockades. Rolling blackouts are predicted for Monday and Tuesday due to everyone being stuck at home cranking up their electric heaters.

Ham radio operators in the area are chatting up a storm...no pun intended. They understand the severity of the situation but quite a few are also admittedly excited to test their preps.

I'll have to wait until afterwards to decide if a hurricane or blizzard is worse in Houston.
-Blast

Morning Update: It's fricken cold out (18F) and there's a deep layer of white stuff all over everything. We have power but approximately 30% of Texas doesn't!
-Blast

Here in Arkansas as well. Cold, snow and more to come later on. No work till Wednesday. Tried to get out with 4 inches worth and decided to stay home.

Friends and family in numerous southern states are dealing with ice, then snow and frigid temps. Read an article where a military canine training camp in TX had to move 800 dogs inside. Stay warm! Stay safe!

With a crew change sked for 15Feb, we left Lafayette, La and prepositoned ourselves in Channelview (East side of Houston), Tx. We left Lafayette on Saturday 13Feb to beat the weather to Houston.

Along the way to Houston, crew change was changed to Wednesday 17Feb. We stopped at a grocery store and picked up drinks (including beer) and microwavable meals, sandwich materials, ice for our ice chest, and snacks.

This hotel (LaQuinta) has a medium small refrigerator (no freezer), small microwave, iron w/ironingboard, and a coffee maker. We brought sufficient food and drinks to get us through Wednesday although we should be leaving Wednesday morning.

Items needed for hunkering down in a hotel:
2 rolls of paper towels, a pack of paper plates; 4 days of microwavable foods, snacks, drinks; my boat GHB (2 regular adult and 2 child GHB’s remain in the truck).

Thanks to modern technology, I am able to know that my boat is windbound against the south bank of the GICW-W just west of the High Island Bridge. If the boat gets moving again, we’ll know it and then we can decide if we should leapfrog to the east (not likely) or just sit tight.

Hey Captain, do you have a HAM license? I should be able to reach you via radio if you do.
-Blast

Here's this morning's video I did on Winter EmergencyTips for Texans .

-Blast

No Blast, no HAM License, justa VHF-FM License. We no longer carry HF Radios onboard since cell phone coverage has gotten to a lesser level many years ago.

UPDATE:
This hotel is filling up fast! I think it’s mostly locals and some marine petro/chem workers. We just extended our reservations through to Friday.

If needed, we will go to a store tomorrow and get a few more microwavable rations.
I’m due to be picked up Wednesday. If the Houston airports remain closed, we will have to jump to Winnie, Tx and get a hotel room so that the crew van can grab me on their way to the boat. The crew change van will be running from NOLA to the boat’s location.

I am curious: how likely is such an cold weather event, historically? Is it something that people would reasonably include in their preparations?

Everything that's not impossible is inevitable. People really need to keep that in mind. Way down south is doesn't do this often but as seen this week, it happens occasionally. There's no reason not to have some preparations for this even if it's just a couple of sleeping bags, a down comforter or extra blankets. In Bozeman we're usually under 80 in the summer and it doesn't get below zero all that often in the winter, or at least now for long periods. But we had triple digits last summer and it occasionally gets down to -35 F in the winter, so it's good to be prepared for both.

A NEW SITUATION and a NEW Plan:
SITREP:
We are in the Rolling Blackout so there is no power in this hotel: no working elevators, no hot coffee, no way to heat food except with hand warmers.

The boat is in Port Arthur, Tx, heading East, and missing a rudder.

Our crew change will be somewhere between Intracoastal City and Morgan City, La.

FUTURE PLAN:
Lug everything in the hotel down to the ground floor, load the truck and go home to Lafayette.

Make the crew change tomorrow morning.

Our friends outside Austin, TX lost power/landline. Imagine that either solar/batt backup or a generator are in their not too distant future. Heating water on gas stove for horses.

The last time it got this cold in Texas was for about 24 hours in the mid-80's. It's just not something people think will happen and so spending money to prep for something that happens every 40 years seems silly. People that camp or take hurricane preps seriously here are generally doing okay but once you're away from the coast, even prepping for hurricanes seems silly to most people. There's a lot of whining and finger-pointing going on. Some justified, some not.
-Blast

I was wondering about your reliance on the hotel microwave...
-Blast

Hopefully full power will be restored soon! Best of luck to all the folks down there in the affected area.

Our tv-news showed a report from Texas,could hardly believe my eyes.

I grew up after WWII in Dallas and i recallvividly an ice storm very similar to this one about 1959-51. Limbs crashing down, bid D paralyzed - a real mess.

Happiness is Dallas in your rear view mirror.

We made it home this afternoon. We have power here now but my DD2 already sent a text msg stating the 30 min rolling blackouts have begun. We had 1 cracked outside pipe that has leaked a large amount of water. I cut and capped the pipe off before dark. I spreaddsalt on the ice on our porch, wheelchair ramp, and steps.

We have no help with my DD1. Hopefully someone will be here tomorrow morning. I have to make crew change around 1000-1100 in the morning.

I have 2 more hitches to go and I am retiring!

Sounds like you're muddling through as well as can be expected! Hopefully the weather breaks and the utilities will be up and running soon.

My Tankerman being driven to Intracoastal City has been stoppedby accidents on I-55 and turned around back to Jackson.

A driver from Lake Charles is coming to get me and I’ll make crew change with the Pilot onboard.

We’ve got more icy weather starting to roll over us now.

This is turning into a real adventure for you, wildman800! Stay safe.

Going on 13 hours without power. Fired up the generator about two hours. Should have enough propane to run it five days in necessary. Wife and kids are bundled up in MN-level sleeping bags. We have tap water but there’s a boil order in place. Thankfully we have a gas stovetop. We’ve mainly just been drinking stored water.
All in all, the first day after hurricanes has been a lot worse. We’ll see what the next few days bring, though.
-Blast

Nice! Sounds like you're making the best of it, Blast!

Family in Memphis are dealing with some water pipe breaks. So far, just exterior, so relatively easy to deal with and no interior damage. One person's heating system that they were planning to replace has been unable to keep up, so they moved in with others. Drained all the pipes just in case the heating gives out completely. Lost power intermittently.

I have family in TX as well, their power is on but their water is out. Main concern is keeping their horses watered, so they have been breaking the ice on a pond and hauling buckets.

What's interesting to me in all of this is how different things are here in Northeast PA, where we might have extreme cold, extreme heat, wind, floods, ice, snow and so on - so our "5 days of autonomous living" setup is just normal.

After chatting with my family, they said that after this is all over, they will definitely be working on a "5-day" setup covering the basics to keep their house alive. One problem they ran into is that some of their plumbing runs through their attic - an idea that blew my mind, but apparently happens there.

Yeah, in Houston we can't have basements so they put the hot water heaters in the attic.

Power is back on. The only damage seems to be gutters were torn off a section of the house due to the weight of the ice.

Just an FYI...40% of the nation's oil/gas production is done in Texas and all those refineries are currently shut down. The ripple effects from this will be huge.
-Blast

Holy moley! This hadn't occurred to me.

No worries. We can reduce exports.

[img]https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/images/2020.02.06/main.svg[/img]

We’re trying again to get a Tankerman from Jackson, Ms to the boat and 1 Tankerman going to Jackson, Ms and 1 Deckhand going to Florida, the crew change driver reported I-55 to be in rough conditions because of ice. She expects the drive from Jackson to south Louisiana to require 5+ hours. I think she’s an optimist.

It won't matter; it's your refinery capacity that's frozen. Crude oil and refined product markets are different planets entirely. I expect to see spot price jumps here, very soon, even though we're refining the crude we produce in our own facilities.

We finally were able yo get our crew change completed on the boat’s end. Now hopefully the 2 men who got off will make it to their homes safely as will the driver!

Great news!

Being crippled, the boat can’t back, twist, & get up enough forward speed to overcome the wind’s effects before it lands on the bank again. So we wait for the winds to shift from the South (the current winds are from the North) and for the wind speeds to drop. Both of thise events are forecast to occur by tomorrow night.

How are you folks doing? Everything suddenly went silent.

Most people had power and water returned after 2-3 days and the weather warmed up into the high 70's. Everyone not critically hurt by it is basically treating it like a bad dream fading quickly.
-Blast

That’s unfortunate. Sadly, all too few will learn the appropriate lessons from this event.

FWIW, the consequences will not be easily forgotten:

https://www.foxbusiness.com/energy/texas-power-market-is-short-2-1-billion-in-payments-after-freeze

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/27/texas-power-winners-losers/

Unfortunately, a race to the bottom ... eventually hits bottom.

Companies that hit bottom don't get much sympathy from me -- they entered the game knowing the stakes. I do have concern and sympathy for consumers who have been sideswiped with outrageous bills.

yep, things are just starting to get interesting...
-Blast

I found my company putting boats and barges back in commission in order to play a Spot Market that has been revived by this situation.