Snowpocalypse 2021

The full story will have to come later this week (hopefully) but Snowpocalypse 2021 is well underway. Or rather, Power Grid Armageddon is well under way here in Texas. After knowing this storm was coming for the last week, we finally got about 3″ of snow last night in the wee hours of the morning. It looks gorgeous! The downside, about 4:30 am we joined the millions of others across the state and lost power. It has not come back on. My parents are without power and my brother and SIL and their family were without until this afternoon and got it for a few hours before it went out again very recently. I’m only writing this because Chris hooked our internet router up to the generator so we could even have internet. Cell reception for the internet has been trash without the wifi and we couldn’t connect to the outside world other than phone calls. Texts were working sporadically. Everything is much better with the wifi on.

We’re ok right now. It will be colder tonight. It was 12* when I woke up this morning. The last really cold temperature we saw here was 19*. The snow has been fun and we even made some snowball fights. Part of the pond is frozen on the perimeter and the pond across the street in the empty lot is completely frozen. A bit WTH moment here in SE Texas. I did read some historical accounts from previous big storms that once upon a time parts of Galveston Bay froze up. So, it isn’t without historical precedence.

The generator is on to keep our citrus trees alive, which may be a failed effort but who knows. They were doing fine on regular power until regular power failed. We’ve also used the microwave, a small space heater, and some charging devices for various items. The space heater is now in the well house to attempt to keep that warm. We’re hoping we can manage to get some warmer water into the pipes later this evening so we can keep that from freezing. We have some in the tank but we cannot run everything or even let anything drip because once the tank is drained, that’s it until power is restored. We’re now talking about a small generator dedicated to the well at some point in the future. Something I’ve wondered about in the past with regards to hurricane season but apparently we need it for polar vortexes.

The temperature didn’t break 20* here today so the snow is still on the ground and I don’t forsee it going anywhere until maybe Friday. We have another winter storm coming that will bring ice and maybe rain that will freeze and turn to ice when it returns to 20s and teens temperatures later this week. In other words, a hell of a mess.

I’ll update again soon.