State officials are once again sounding the alarm about extreme winter weather hitting large parts of the Lone Star State this week.
Speaking with reporters on Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott said state officials are monitoring wildfire concerns in West Texas and heavy rain in East and Southeast Texas, as well as an incoming arctic blast that “will likely be the coldest weather event of the year – and actually, in some places in the state of Texas, it may be the coldest event ever marked in history in the state of Texas.”
Eric Berger, a meteorologist with Space City Weather based in Houston, joined the Standard with a look at what to expect and how to prepare.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Watching the news conference from the governor, it seems that for most of the state, the concern isn’t so much snow, sleet or ice, but bitter, bitter cold. How cold?
Eric Berger: Quite cold. We’re really looking at the period of Wednesday and especially Thursday morning impacting the state.
On Thursday morning, we’re looking at air temperatures below zero degrees in the far north of the Panhandle, much of the I-35 corridor is going to be in the teens. So it’s going to be a very cold day across the entire state, in the morning especially.
I was noticing out where you are, the Houston area, is projected to get some rain before this day is done. How likely is it that some of that wet stuff could freeze and create dangers on the roads?
Well, fortunately, we’re going to remain above freezing today and tonight in Houston and even tomorrow morning. So I don’t think that any of the rain that falls will be wintry precipitation here.
And if it does fall, it should dry out, especially with the winds tonight, before we really get to freezing temperatures.
Officials are emphasizing people, pets and pipes. On the people front, there was a reminder that struck me in the news conference that if you’re driving and you have a problem like you stall out, there’s a phone number on the back of your license to call for a state trooper. It sounds to me like they’re very concerned about someone getting stranded and suffering from hypothermia.
I think that’s right. Let’s face it: In Texas, we’re not really accustomed to these kinds of temperatures. And if you are out in the night and you make a run to the store or driving down a country lane, you have an issue, normally you pop out of your car, address it or whatever.
But if you can’t turn on your engine, you know, temperatures in your vehicle can very quickly drop. So people need to take extra precaution with the cold.
» MORE: Why do Texans need to drip our faucets in freezing temperatures?
The Texas Department of Emergency Management said they have a list of plumbers and are urging people to get out now and learn how to shut off the water to the house.
How soon do you want to make that decision to shut off water? I mean, how cold does it have to get before you take that step?
With pipes, you really start to see issues on exterior pipes when you get down in the mid-20s. So you want to turn off the water to your house, you know, maybe after you take your shower the night before a hard freeze is coming.
And then, you know, next morning when it gets to freezing, you can turn it back on.
Do you need to drain the pipes, like turn on the water faucet and all that kind of good stuff?
Right. You turn off the water supply to your house, should find out where that valve is, and then just turn on the faucets in different parts of the house just to drain water from the pipes.
Now, how long is this cold front going to cover most of Texas? When can we expect things to warm up again?
Well, really, the exceptional cold is going to be over by midday on Thursday. And we’ll see another cold night Thursday night. But then we’re really going to be into spring-like conditions by this weekend.
But, you know, in terms of like pets, pipes, people and power concerns, I would say the worst of this is going to be over by around noon on Thursday.
And we should note that ERCOT apparently is not concerned about power supply. If there are outages, they’ll be local outages. And I think that they’re looking forward to not having to deal with a lot of icy road conditions and that sort of thing.
So it seems like when it comes to bad winter weather, this – although it will be pretty bad and pretty cold out there – won’t be as bad as it could be, especially if we were to have a lot of precipitation, which is not in the forecast.
