HOUSTON – Houston, get ready to get cold!
A big cold front is pushing arctic air right into Texas next week.
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Temperatures as you wake up this week will be below freezing in some parts of our area.
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For a lot of us, that brings back those memories of the 2021 freeze, with burst water pipes and power outages for days.
Houstonians can relax this time around - this isn’t THAT freeze.
However, hardware stores all around Houston are busy with people looking to protect their plants and pipes.
“I’m just looking at some faucet protectors,” said Henry Miranda, who was shopping at Bering’s Hardware on Bissonnet Street. “I don’t want another burst pipe.”
He says another because he dealt with a pipe breaking in his garage during the 2021 freeze.
“I mean, water was running for probably hours,” he said.
Before you freak out - relax - and read the rest of the story.
“Yeah. I don’t expect too many issues with this system,” said Doug Lewin wit the Energy Capital Podcast.
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(See? I told you to relax)
Doug is an energy expert in the State of Texas. He tracks the ERCOT grid like you might track players on a fantasy football team.
“The huge caveat, right, Is that forecast change, right,” Lewin said. “Those kind of temperatures don’t lead to levels of demand that are particularly difficult to meet. You’d really have to see temperatures get well down, you know, close to the statewide average somewhere around ten for for me to really be worried and single digits then you’re into the kind of Uri situation where there would be outages.”
ERCOT, which managed the flow of power to more than 27 million customers, says their grid conditions could be normal next week.
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Meanwhile, CenterPoint Energy, the company responsible for the poles and power lines, is getting ready for the worst case, just in case.
“We’ve been prepared even before this weekend and continued to do the work that is required,” said CenterPoint Energy Spokesperson Michelle Hundley.
If everything goes south and horribly wrong, are those big backup generators ready to go?
“If needed, we have those generators available. Yes,” Hundley said.
This is a good freeze to go through the motions and make sure you’re ready for the deep freeze.
But simply put - this isn’t the big one.
“This does not look like that. So, I’m not I’m not losing any sleep over this one, at least not yet,” Lewin said.
