Storm Leaves Over One Hundred Thousand Austin Residents Without Power

Austin does not respond well to bad weather.

Over one hundred thousand Austin residents are without power due to an icy blast of winter. This is not the grid going down, this is just hundreds of incidents all happening at once leaving residents in the cold and the dark.

The Austin-American Statesman is reporting that as of eight o'clock this morning, there were 442 active outages. While not specifically spelled out these things tend to be ice on lines, or tree branches cutting lines, and things of that nature.

I actually lived in Austin during a huge ice storm, and they are even less prepared for something like this than folks from around here. Austin, in short, rarely gets any real winter weather to speak of (well, there was that winter storm Uri, but other than that). During that time Austin was just a giant skating rink surrounding the capitol building.

Austin Energy does appear to be on the case and is trying to get everyone back up on an incident-by-incident basis. Weather conditions in Austin are also supposed to improve tomorrow with temperatures in the mid 40's, then in the mid 50's on Thursday.  In the meantime, they are just suggesting residents bundle up (the high today is 34).

This is a great reminder for you to look at your own winter weather preparedness. If you have a fireplace, is it clean and do you have wood? If you have a generator, do you have gas? Do you have some food that doesn't have to be cooked? There is any number of things you could do today in honor of our Austin friends to make sure we don't need help in the next winter emergency.