A friend lives in Houston. During the event I looked at the radar and o.O FZRA.... freezing rain and just below him, just south of his house, pinned on my radar by gps by being there a whole buncha times in the past 15 years, snow.
I lived the exact scenario in Grand Forks ND in 1997, when I was a wx guy there.
Rain, ice, rain, ice, rain.. only I didn't know about the ice. "Airman, where did you chip that piece of clear ice from?" "From the flagpole." *gulp*
Close. It was the decision to not winterize the equipment.
While this freeze is bad, a freeze like this is not "once in a lifetime", but easily seen as about every few years. 2021. 2011. 2008. 2006. 2003. 1989. 1983. This is a fairly common occurrence.
After 2011 there was a commission that identified a bunch of winterizing steps that should be required. The companies agreed to take them as recommendations... And then they ignored them. They claimed that they were the experts, they knew what they were doing,
2021. 2011. 2008. 2006. 2003. 1989. 1983. This is a fairly common occurrence.
Huh. Had a texan (forget what town, ebay vendor i bought from) told me today this is a '100 year event')
If it truly as frequent as you say that Texas gets clobbered by blizzards... then yeah, they need to armor it against that.
But... I swapped DRT for RDR. In English, that means when I was given a forecasting job in school, I was given Del Rio. When I saw the high temps, and the fact that officer parking had awnings, I'm like "too hot for me." So I swapped some poor soul for RDR... Grand Forks AFB. OMG
Texas climates are a bit more diverse than you may expect. This is one thing I like to point out to folks - you can drive 12 hours west on I-10 from Beaumont for 12 hours straight and still be a bit shy of El Paso. Or leave Armarillo and head southerly for 11 1/2 hours and still be a bit shy of Brownsville. There are lots of countries in the world with less geographic area. So it's really hard to generalize for the state. But, case in point: El Paso is not on the Texas grid nor under control of ERCOT.
There is no "National grid." El Paso is part of the Western Interconnect. The dividing line between Eastern and Western runs roughly down the middle of the Great Plains. There are a handful of AC-DC-AC interties between east and west with a total transfer capacity less than 2GW -- that is, about the capacity of a single large generating station. No one's ever made a viable economic case for increasing that capacity.
Both the Eastern and the Western were established by the Power Act, were they not? Thus I'd say that distinction you make, while accurate, isn't very important for the point being made, which is that El Paso plays ball according to the regulations of the Federal gov't. Almost the entirety of the state of Texas, otherwise, has staunchly refused that because "Federal gubmint bad, mkay?" Also, they're always rattling their sabers about secession, but more than happy to take assistance from the Fed gov't.
It was the ice. (Score:5, Interesting)
It was ice.
A friend lives in Houston. During the event I looked at the radar and o.O FZRA.... freezing rain and just below him, just south of his house, pinned on my radar by gps by being there a whole buncha times in the past 15 years, snow.
I lived the exact scenario in Grand Forks ND in 1997, when I was a wx guy there.
Rain, ice, rain, ice, rain.. only I didn't know about the ice. "Airman, where did you chip that piece of clear ice from?" "From the flagpole." *gulp*
THen it snowed. Oh man it snowed, an
Re: It was the ice. (Score:5, Interesting)
Close. It was the decision to not winterize the equipment.
While this freeze is bad, a freeze like this is not "once in a lifetime", but easily seen as about every few years. 2021. 2011. 2008. 2006. 2003. 1989. 1983. This is a fairly common occurrence.
After 2011 there was a commission that identified a bunch of winterizing steps that should be required. The companies agreed to take them as recommendations... And then they ignored them. They claimed that they were the experts, they knew what they were doing,
Re: (Score:2)
2021. 2011. 2008. 2006. 2003. 1989. 1983. This is a fairly common occurrence.
Huh. Had a texan (forget what town, ebay vendor i bought from) told me today this is a '100 year event')
If it truly as frequent as you say that Texas gets clobbered by blizzards... then yeah, they need to armor it against that.
But ... I swapped DRT for RDR. In English, that means when I was given a forecasting job in school, I was given Del Rio. When I saw the high temps, and the fact that officer parking had awnings, I'm like "too hot for me." So I swapped some poor soul for RDR... Grand Forks AFB. OMG
Re: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: It was the ice. (Score:2)
There is no "National grid." El Paso is part of the Western Interconnect. The dividing line between Eastern and Western runs roughly down the middle of the Great Plains. There are a handful of AC-DC-AC interties between east and west with a total transfer capacity less than 2GW -- that is, about the capacity of a single large generating station. No one's ever made a viable economic case for increasing that capacity.
Re: It was the ice. (Score:5, Insightful)