Austin Winter Storm Update for February 18, 2021: What’s Open?

Update: I ventured out to the HEB at McNeil & 183 and the major roads are passable. HEB closes at 5, and the meat section was picked almost clean, but there was a lot of edible food available in various departments if you’re flexible.

Things are slowly warming up, and the power situation seems to be improving:

The Governor discussed the current power situation in Texas and what the state is doing to get more Texans back online. There still remains about 10,000 megawatts (MW) that are off the power grid in Texas. About 6,000 MW have been added to the Texas grid over the past day, which is equivalent to power for about 1.2 million households. In addition to the 6,000 MW restored to the grid, additional power generation from coal and other sources will continue to come online throughout tomorrow. Small natural gas generators should sporadically add megawatts over the next 24 hours to help bring electricity to thousands of Texans. There are still challenges with all sources of generation, resulting from mechanical difficulties, gas supply issues, and the effects of extreme winter weather conditions.

Here’s the power outage map. Things seem to change very slowly on it…

Those on City of Austin water are also on a boil notice, and some parts of the city evidently have no water.

I thought I would focus on what’s open and what’s not:

  • First up HEB. There are reports of HEB shelves being picked clean, and the stores that are open are only open 12-5 PM. HEB will update the list of stores closed for the day at 10 AM.

    Update: Here’s the Austin-area HEB store closed list for today:

    #236 A7 – Wells Branch & 1825
    #045 A8 – Congress & Oltorf
    #225 A10 – Hwy 71 & 290
    #265 A14 – FM 1431 & 183
    #659 A16 – Hwy 183 & Lakeline
    #388 A20 – Parmer & McNeil
    #451 A24 – 620 & 2222
    #476 A25 – Parmer & I35
    #029 A29 – Bee Cave & 360
    #091 A12 – Riverside & S. Pleasant
    #183 A15 – Lamar & Rundberg
    Kyle
    Luling
    Leander
    Kingsland
    Elgin

    Very similar to yesterday’s list. Also, the Westgate Central Market is closed, but the North Lamar location is open from 10 AM to 6 PM.

  • Next up: Walmart. The situation here seems to have improved a bit. The Sam’s at 183 and Lakeline Mall Drive is open, as is the Walmart at Northcross, and the Sam’s at 290 West and Mopac, plus the Walmarts in Manor, Elgin and Buda. All other locations appear to be closed.(The Round Rock locations of both Walmart and Sam’s showed open yesterday, but closed today.)

    Update: The 183/Lakeline Mall and 290 West/Mopac Sam’s appears to be closed, but the ones at 183 at 360 and on South I-35 now appear to be open. The Palm Valley Walmart in Round Rock also appears to be open.

  • Supposedly Randall’s and Fiesta are open.
  • I heard reports that Dollar General is open, but can’t verify it.
  • A couple of lists of open Austin restaurants.
  • Update: A crowdsource list of what’s open or closed and what they have.
  • Update: The Big Lots at McNeil at 183 was open and had a pretty good selection of snacks, plus some staples and canned goods.

    • Friday it’s supposed to get into the 40s.

    Update: Good news!

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    This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2021 at 7:25 AM and is filed under Austin, Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    2 Responses to “Austin Winter Storm Update for February 18, 2021: What’s Open?”

    1. George says:
      February 18, 2021 at 10:09 AM

      Thanks for aggregating this information. I got power (off Brodie, south of Wm. Cannon) about 9 last night and it’s been steady since. No water, though.

    2. LinkSwarm for February 19, 2021 « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
      February 19, 2021 at 8:23 AM

      […] Attacking so fast they won't know what hit them… « Austin Winter Storm Update for February 18, 2021: What’s Open? […]

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