7°F and a good four inches of snow on the ground (which probably feels like a foot to us).
There’s an official disaster declaration and the city has pretty much shut down:
The University of Texas at Austin is closed through 8 a.m. Wednesday.
Austin Energy is performing rolling blackouts to conserve power. The electricity provider, which has more than 500,000 customers, instituted the measure as a “last resort to preserve the reliability of the electric system as a whole,” the city said in a statement. The outages typically last 10 to 40 minutes but were lasting longer than expected as of early morning Dec. 15, Austin Energy tweeted. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has asked utilities around the state to use rotating outages to lessen the strain on the state’s power grid.
Many flights are canceled. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport officials urged travelers to confirm their flight status if flying in the next 48 hours. The airport also announced that Security Checkpoint 1 is closed and all passengers will be screened through Security Checkpoint 2. According to FlightAware, 138 flights into or out of ABIA had been canceled as of 8 a.m. Feb. 15. In addition, many roads around the airport have been closed because of ice.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the Texas Interconnect Grid, reports that the grid is near capacity and rolling blackouts may last some time. My power hasn’t gone out here since it was restored Friday morning.
You don’t even need to tell Austin drivers to stay out of this stuff. If you look at the traffic cams, the roads are empty.
Yesterday HEB reported that it was running out of items and closing early, and even if it’s open today, it’s on a reduced schedule. The local HEB phone number just rings, so I wouldn’t count on any of them being open.
I imagine that almost all restaurants are closed (here’s an outdated list). No answer at the Jim’s and Denny’s locations I called. I even tried calling all three local Waffle Houses to see if any were open, and all three calls went to voicemail.
Truly the end times are upon us.
I’ll give you more first hand info when I walk the dogs later.
Stay warm…
Update: There are reportedly almost 2 million people without power across Texas this morning.
Update 2: A whole lot of power outages all across Austin. This isn’t an outage map, it’s a bad Picasso painting:
Update 3: Firefighters close East Parmer at Dessau due to too many stuck vehicles. (Hat tip: johnnyk20001.)
Update 4: No Capital metro today.
BREAKING: All @CapMetroATX services are now suspended for Tuesday, Feb. 16 for the second day in a row. #ATXsnow #atxwx #txwx
— Bryce Newberry (@Bryce_Newberry) February 16, 2021
Update 5: It’s not just Austin. Houston-area households are suffering from a huge number of power outages.
Update 6: A commenter asked about Dallas, so here’s Oncor’s outage map. But it’s even less useful than the Houston or Austin maps…
Update 7: 4.4 million without power?
Update 8: Pflugerville is under a boil water notice:
Due to a prolonged power outage at the water treatment plant, Pflugerville is under a boil water notice. We are working with Oncor to restore power, but until further notice, all city water customers must boil their water prior to consumption. (1/3) pic.twitter.com/alhpeSfyaN
— Pflugerville, TX (@PflugervilleTX) February 15, 2021
Update 9: Lists of which Austin restaurants are open or closed.