@All the northerners making fun of Texans rn:
Our houses are not built for temperatures below 30°F. They’re also designed to shed heat. Good design for when it regularly gets to 100°F in the summer and winters are mild.
Homes here generally do not have furnaces. We rely on heat pumps and resistance coils, the former of which is not effective below 25°F, and the latter of which use lots of electricity
The electrical infrastructure is designed to meet demand in the afternoons in the heat of the summer, not frigid winter nights. Also, while we have a shit ton of wind and solar capacity, it’s currently crippled by frozen turbines and snowfall.
Combine all of the above and the electrical grid usage is astronomical, even when people are barely reaching 50°F indoors. The stress on the system and reduced generating capacity has caused ERCOT to start rolling blackouts as a way of preventing a mass uncontrolled blackout ala the Northeast in 2003. So that means no heat in houses that naturally shed heat, when it’s 7°F out.
Since we live in a warm place, many people don’t have clothing for this level of cold. Means a lot of people are really, really cold, and their houses are already losing heat fast.
Speaking of homes shedding heat, this also means pipes are not heavily insulated, and without proper measures taken (which many people are unaware of) that means no water.
We don’t generally keep equipment like ice scrapers and snow shovels handy. Most hardware stores don’t stock rock salt for ice. Meaning we can’t leave our homes and go anywhere if the car and roads are covered with ice. The cities don’t have snow plows. Nobody here has chains or snow tires to be able to drive safely either.
As if all of this is not already bad enough, the local plants are not evolved for this kind of freeze, including snow. So many trees are breaking under the weight and causing damage.
We’re not wimps. We’re simply not built for it, don’t have the gear for it, and don’t have instinctual level response of what to do in these situations. It’s like how the Northeast had a lot of issues after Hurricane Sandy.
2087
amandla
pixelskylines
ellievsbear
stormborns
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