But its almost entirely just the Houston Metro without power at this point, not the rural areas. Density isn't great, but it should be enough to justify given how frequent major storms are in the area and how costly all the shutdowns and repairs are.
I'm surprised how many power lines are still working despite the large trees that have fallen on them and brought the lines down to the ground. Surprised how many trees were knocked over during this storm that have been fine in cat3+ storms before.
Centerpoint, the privatized power company the maintains the grid in Houston, did not bother to stage linemen before the storm, which is the normal practice. Linemen had to come from out of state after the storm. Then, centerpoint told the linemen once they were here that they would have to find and pay for their own accommodations. That has never been the case before. Finally, they are trying to low-ball the linemen, so there are pay negotiations ongoing. Also they're spending a lot of time idle in parking lots waiting to be assigned work by centerpoint.
hey on the plus side we won't have this problem next time there's a massive outage in texas because no rational linemen will bother with driving ten hours to get lowballed and sleep in their trucks
My mind always goes to an inevitable Cat 3 that knocks out power, floods the lower regions and then leaves people stranded dealing with the heat and non potable water. Texans' thanaton death drive is a sight to behold and that they have not formed a mob to hunt down their elected officials really shows how domesticated they are.
Every storm and record breaking temperature inevitably inches us closer to something that'll retroactively be known as like, The Houston Event or something
This is like the third major storm in texas I’ve seen within the last few years. The people in charge really are dedicated to the suffering hustle and refuse to prepare. It’s almost admirable how much misery they can allow
Going by power outages, its the 3rd major storm since May. The Houston Derecho knocked out power for I think 800K and then the Dallas storm a week or two later took out over 1 million people's power.
My cousin is one of them, the sheer misery of that southern heat without a way to cool, he's thankful he got water back just yesterday for the old water bath cooling method.