people are mad

Yesterday the headline to every article about the power outages in Texas included a claim that it was because of wind generation. Today it backfired spectacularly and nearly every article has called the grid operator and governor out for lying. 

Plus, people are mad. They are angry that the gas pipelines aren't weatherized. They want to know why Alaska can keep their gas pipelines from freezing and Texas can't.

Now, this isn't really fair. Texas never has cold like this, it wouldn't have been financially reasonable to prepare for an eventuality that was never expected. But, people are cold, they don't have power, and they don't have water. Some can't escape to somewhere else because the roads are dangerous. They can't go to "warming centers" because they'll catch Covid. People who need power for oxygen have to call for emergency assistance. People in Texas aren't used to this so many didn't know to open their cabinets to expose their pipes and leave faucets running. Pipes are bursting. More snow is coming tonight and tomorrow. 19,800 MW of gas power plants are offline due to cold. 

Other states have outages too but it is most severe in Texas, mainly because they aren't used to it. 

(The storm will hit my state tonight.)

They were caught lying, everyone is calling them out on it, and any understanding people might have had for the decision not to "weatherize" the natural gas infrastructure is gone. 

People are now pointing out that these unusual weather occurrences are becoming much more frequent and that places are going to have to invest for weather extremes. 

If you go climbing my family tree and you take your binoculars and you look several branches out you'll find I do have family after all. For some reason a lot of them decided to move to Texas (or maybe it is just the great-aunt who moved to Texas was more genetically successful than the other relatives). I looked them up after my mother died and Facebook makes it possible to be a little connected. So far, so good. They were able to drive to other people's homes who had power and warmth. 

On the bright side, the kids can make snowmen that are taller than a few inches and the boys, who were completely disappointed with the snow earlier in the winter, should be more satisfied now.