Houston right now, haven't had power, nor water since yesterday. My room is sitting at 20ish degrees and has been all day. I've quite literally been snug under a load of blankets with my wife all day just to stay warm.

My office back in Dallas which is not normally open offered to let people stay the night since they happen to be on the same grid as a hospital and I seriously considered trying to make it there today

Note to readers: If you're not from the US and confused about the 20 degrees (I was), note that it is Farhenheit and not Celsius! So around -6°C, which is of course very cold!

(edit: when you're on the internet, better to specify which unit you use, your audience is international)

I mean -6°C isn't very cold either. Its not every year you see temperatures like that, but its also not exactly uncommon. We had -17°C (1.4 °F) and lower here in Germany. We had some problems here and there, especially the railway, but afaik there were no major problems regarding power outages and heating.

But obviously we're much more prepared for temperatures like this here.

I'm quite certain it's never -6 in your bedroom.

Sorry, misunderstood the original comment. I thought it was referring to outside temperatures

Sure, it isn't that cold when you have heat and proper clothing.

The power is out - there is no heat. For a lot of folks, this is more akin to camping without proper gear, during the winter, and without a fire.

There isn't much infrastructure to deal with snow and ice, either, nor are most folks going to be prepared to deal with frozen pipes.

The folks in Texas don't have the same sort of house insulation either: Since it doesn't get that cold, but it does get hot, the houses are designed to keep the house cool. And since this cold is very rare, folks aren't likely to have actual winter coats. What makes the cold tolerable for me - in Norway - is that I'm fairly prepared for it. They aren't.

-6 is really darn cold for the unprepared.

-6°C is pretty damn cold _inside_ a house.

20F / -6C indoors? Canadian here, mind blown a little. Are homes in Texas not insulated? They must be, you have really hot summers and run AC all the time..

Hope your power came back already. If not / or for another time: candles are great for heating a single room. Small, safe, but they make a difference.

What? That’s way below freezing and totally unsafe. Why don’t you sleep in your car? (WARNING: Make sure your exhaust is uncovered and you’re not in your shed)

> What? That’s way below freezing and totally unsafe.

How do you think people safely camp in cold climates? You can sleep safely at far far below zero in a sleeping bag.

In a sleeping bag which is rated for that temperature, sometimes cheaper bags are for like -5°C, which can be VERY uncomfortable already for +5°C.

Why would it be unsafe to sleep? They are inside the house so they are protected against the elements.

I'm pretty sure sleeping in your car would be more dangerous just because of the discomfort leading to worse quality sleep and fatigue.

(Just to make it clear I didn't mean to downplay this. Obviously to survive in your house at -10c you do need preparations which I understand many people don't have not being used to these temperatures. It's easy to forget as someone who lives a bit further up north that it's not a given that people have thick air tight walls and heavy down filled blankets to help them through. So to answer my own question: It would be unsafe because they might not have the things they need to be safe.)

dude, go to the office. Its too cold to sleep in those conditions.

> Its too cold to sleep in those conditions.

I don't understand - how do you think people camp in cold parts of the world? Of course you can sleep in those conditions.

IF you have the gear for it.

I think the chances of random families in TX having 0 degree cold weather camping gear are low.

I've found that it's much easier to sleep in this temperature than the rest of the day. You just bundle up under several blankets and it doesn't feel that different. Living in a 30 degree house does take some getting used to though.

You've never been winter camping?

A texan? I didn't buy anything below a 20* sleeping bag until I started camping in the desert and even 20* was super low for TX, most go with 40. I've got a -30 now but I never knew they went that low until I needed one.

Roads have ice so you might get hurt getting there

The major highways are pretty good but it’s snowing more tonight so it’s gonna take another day to clear up. By that time, it’ll be over 40 so power will likely be restored in short order.

20 degrees? Laughs in European. Until "Oh, °f for 'freedom degrees'" realised.

did not downvote, but

Dr. Fahrenheit was of course the famous European physicist who invented the mercury-in-glass thermometer.

I'm wondering how rolling outages on the proposed schedules were supposed to work in this situation.

If they gave everyone power 50% of the time, everyone would crank everything they have to the max during those periods to get some heat into their buildings. Unless their total ability to consume energy is less than 2x their average consumption, it's not going to help.

To have any effect on overall power consumption, they first have to overcome this effect, and reduce power availability so people can't just shift the load.

Depending on creativity (if you have an electric tumble dryer... that's a fan heater), I bet many people could easily 10x their average power consumption.

If I had power for a short period of time and cold was an issue, I'd be dumping ~10 kW into water immediately (the only energy storage I can improvise on short notice).

You are right if they were trying to reduce load 50%, that's basically impossible for the reasons you mention. They were only trying to get it down 20% and it might have worked if they could have effectively rolled the blackouts. A lot of people have natural gas heat. It doesn't work when the power is out (no ignition, no thermostat, and no fan), but doesn't put a huge load on the electric grid when it is on. For a well insulated house, you are probably running the heat for much less than 50% of the day. We run on average 6-8 hours in the winter. A rolling blackout where power was off for 1 hour, on for 2 would have exceeded their target savings, and shouldn't have affected heating or demand.

> A lot of people have natural gas heat. It doesn't work when the power is out

That doesn’t have to be the case. I have gas heat [0], that works fine when our power is out.

(Not intending to detract from the rest of your point)

[0] a basic Williams wall furnace on a 50 year old thermostat.

How does the thermostat work? I've had the old mercury switch style thermostats before, but those work by completing a circuit, so I assumed they were dependent on power being on.

Googling tells me it’s “a pilot millivolt system”. I guess the downside of this design is that the pilot* is always lit, consuming a certain amount of fuel. Neat old quick start guide for a similar thermostat: http://nebula.wsimg.com/b2bc334b6de3591406ddd01974f01830?Acc...

* pilot is manual piezoelectric; doesn’t require electric power

How does it blow heat around the house?

Not very well, I lived in an apartment with one of those in the hallway, had to set up a fan to blow warm air to the living room or bedrooms or it got way too cold on cold nights. (which fortunately, were rare where I lived). It'd definitely be better than nothing in an extended power failure, but forced air heat is more comfortable

It’s a wall furnace in the center of the apartment, I guess it blows via convection, outward on both sides of the wall.

These heaters are super common in California, and some larger homes have multiple of them. I assume they’re not as efficient as more modern solutions, but they are certainly reliable and low-maintenance.

I don't know about North Texas but I don't think gas furnaces are that common in Houston or Austin.

These type were quite common when natural gas lines were first run to households in Houston:

Dearborn gas heater example just like the one I had:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

In The Heights many original homes have a smaller version(s) built into the wall, sometimes a tiny one right there above the bathtub.

After converting to showers sometimes it's right in your face while standing.

Without a full set of built-ins, there were natural gas petcocks in each major room for portables or relocatables like Dearborns.

Propane gas is relatively common, but wither way:

1) Natural gas has been a problem because the moisture in it has been freezing pipes

2) The cold has caused the pressure in propane tanks to drop, impairing their functionality.

None of this might have been a huge problem if Texas didn't keep its power grid almost completely separate from the rest of the country. That has meant they can't easily bring in capacity to cover their own lack. Though even moderate winterization would probably have significantly reduced the problems. It's not like they have to prepare for continuous -10 F.

I don't know what the geographic distribution is, but overall the state is split evenly between between natural gas and electric heat (45% each), with the remainder being misc sources like propane.

I wonder why it is not possible to reduce the max amount of power each house can draw by 50% instead of doing blackouts. In Italy houses have remotely controlled meters, if you change contract and have a different power allowance your meter gets reporgrammed without the need of an operator on site. This would force people to consume less power to avoid automatic detachment, while still not leaving them completely in the cold.

Don't they have any kind of smart meter in Texas? Maybe reprogramming them is a slow operation that cannot be done to almost every meter in a short timespan?

I suspect smart meters are optional / being lazily phased-in. I've been out of the US for a decade, but I know my dad gets a discount on his electricity because he opted-in to a smart meter.

If you gave everyone power 20% of the time though, I don't think the vast majority of people would shift that much load.

The only real power consumption anyone does above usual is plug in their phones. And obviously their heaters run full blast.

I was out for 17 hours from yesterday to mid afternoon today. Slept through the 0deg weather without power and yet still kept the house at 43deg internally without a heat source.

Here is our simi-successful attempt to survive.

* boarded up all the windows and doors with sheets, curtains, and heavy drop clothes

* limit going outside to fewest essential trips

* close all bedrooms and abandon them. All pets and occupants sleep in close proximity in a common area

* we have lots of sleeping bags and mink blankets. It’s more about layers

As a Canadian, a few more tips: keep kitchen and bathroom cabinet doors open. To keep water pipes from freezing. They are trouble if they freeze, expand, crack, and then when thaw - start leaking. (Empty toilets if risk of freezing.)(add glycol if you have it, in bowl.) Also can trickle water from the taps - moving water sure but freeze so fast as still water. Blankets, in doorways, hallways, Windows - keep warmth in room where you need it.

"Keep your taps running" is the one practical bit of advice here.

It does look like they intended to roll, then figured out they didn't have enough capacity to roll. So, the people "rolled" first got stuck.

Rolling outages are when they've got enough power for some neighborhoods, but not all of them. Texas is so short of power right now that they've dropped power everywhere they can, excepting only certain critical facilities (hospitals, police), and continued operation of the grid itself -- a totally cold restart, they say, could take weeks.

A rolling outage would be relatively short in duration, and "roll" from one area to another. No roll happened here, just a bunch of areas off for long periods of time, and others not off at all.

Yeah, "rolling outages" is a joke. I went 19 hours without power in GP&L territory yesterday and portions of my house were down below 40F when I went to bed around 9 PM last night. They finally decided to restore power in my neighborhood at 4 AM this morning.

Austin here, staying at a colleague’s place who’s in an over-55 community on the hospital grid (unlikely to be taken down).

Agreed that they’re misusing “rolling outages”. We got an hour of power a day for the last two days and don’t foresee getting even an hour today. I don’t know who they think they’re fooling because everyone here knows exactly that these outages aren’t rolling and is out for ERCOT blood.

My guess why we keep seeing rolling blackouts mentioned is that ERCOT has three alert levels, and the way you would typically deal with number three is with rolling blackouts, so that has become the term everyone uses.

Also, it's up to the power distributors in different cities to cut in the ways that they can. Some are doing rolling blackouts, and others (like mine...) aren't.

You realize ERCOT doesn't specify how rolling outages are implemented, right? That's up to the generating utility/transmission network. Ift you're not getting what you think you should, point your frustration where it belongs at least.

The ERCOT website say they "manage the flow of electric power to more than 26 million Texas customers -- representing about 90 percent of the state’s electric load. As the independent system operator for the region, ERCOT schedules power on an electric grid that connects more than 46,500 miles of transmission lines"

This makes it seem like they would have at least some influence on the rolling outages, no?

You'd think, but nope.

If you hit the About section and watch their videos, you learn of ERCOT's role as a market facilitator and administrative body. They don't actually own any of the infrastructure, they are just a mediating influence through which granular activities are coordinated. They have the highest level view of activity as a whole on the grid, but there is no centralized control room or intimacy with utilities systems that allows ERCOT any semblance of fine grained control beyond being a message dispatcher and info propagter. Powerful and influential? Yes. Top down driver of day to day operations? No.

If anyone is interested in more about the Midnight Connection scandal, I highly recommend

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/4...

That's terrible. I'm in Driftwood and a touch rural and we've had no hits. The subdivisions up the road have not been doing very well either. Bang for you buck with power probably has them focused on the higher density locations. Stay safe and stay warm. Glad you got some place better for now.

Hopefully that's 5C and not 5F.

I don’t think Texans are legally allowed to use non-freedom units.

Approximately zero chance that that would be 5C

We were at 14F this morning...

We were at 0 F today morning north of Dallas.

Wow, I had no idea it had gotten _that_ cold down there. I've never seen it that cold here in the PNW - west of the Cascades, anyway.

Denver Metro was -15F the other day. Though they are built for it, unlike Austin. This cold snap is having a fun time with the whole middle of NA.

We hit -14 F yesterday in OKC.

That’s rough. I’ve bundled up without power with little ones for 4 day, but it was mid 20’s. Keep warm however you can, safely...and good luck, don’t wait and cross fingers, take action.

While you (and siblings) are all correct, I don't get the down voting of the poor guy trying to make a joke while being considerate-ish and hoping that you guys were actually warmer than you were.

That said, I've been out in the hammock in 0F here, including snow and wind chill on top and been warm (oh wait, I'll be down voted too). It's all about insulation, which actually helps in both warm and cold weather. You can see that in Spain for example, where they have very warm weather (like Texas) in summer. It's a fallacy to believe though that there's no insulation used and that there's no heating in Spain.

Making jokes is for Reddit, not HN

The more time I spend on Hacker News, the more it just seems like Reddit to me. All the worst impulses are still here. The dog-piling, the comments that were made without opening the article, the low-effort jokes. At least there's no pun threads.

I find that jokes can work out fine on HN.

The catch is that it can't be a low-effort joke. People on reddit run jokes into the ground so far that they need to bring a passport to be prepared for their arrival in China.

You could be a Canadian living in TX. You could be an American who prefers the metric system. And OMG I had no idea it had gotten that cold down there, please accept my condolences.

The comment is just hoping that they have some degree of warmth in their apartment and not way below freezing. That's not dumb.

Texan here. This is great advice and have been constantly reminding myself of it the past couple of days

Probably Kelvin

A survival game 'The Long Dark' might be handy to learn how to keep warm. You dont need external heaters, just lots of layers and food, your body is a heat engine.

I'm in Dallas too. What we did was pull out our generator that runs on propane then run an extension cord from the garage to inside the house connected to an electric heater. Close the bedroom door. We were about 75 degrees.

You are crazy to not have a backup generator! It is an essential item to have!

Until recently, I've mostly lived in apartments or condos where a backup generator is not easy to own or operate since there are limited places to store fuel or to put a generator while running. Even if I'm ok with putting it on the balcony and running a cord inside, my neighbor may not want the generator's exhaust in his balcony.

Now I live in a single-family home and have an entire RV parked beside the house (with an on-board generator, and around 100 hours of fuel in the RV's gas tank to run it). I can run an extension cord to power the house furnace as needed, but unless it was below freezing and I was worried about the pipes freezing in the house, I'd probably just let the house stay dark and move into the RV during an extended power outage.

So I can confidently say "You are crazy to not have a backup Recreational Vehicle!". Maybe I should buy a travel trailer to back up the RV.

>my neighbor may not want the generator's exhaust in his balcony.

Might be easier to convince them if you shared the electricity . . .

I'm 46. I've never owned a backup generator. Even here with rolling outages, I'm not sure I will every buy one. I don't think I am crazy.

I hope I'm reading that wrong and you're not saying you actually have the generator in the garage (unless that garage isn't connected to the house), that's a good way to kill your entire family.

Not sure by your comment where exactly you've located your generator, but as a PSA:

Do not run a propane generator in or near your garage if it's attached to your home, since there's a serious risk of CO poisoning. It should be located as far away from the house as possible and away from windows and doors.

Prefarably at least 20 meters, especially if it is a gas-powered generator (OP mentioned theirs is propane, which is not quite as dangerous as gasoline).

Edit: I hope you have battery powered CO detectors on each floor and near the bedroom.

> I actually got the room yesterday, but the hotel lost power after an hour, so I had to go back home and sleep in 5 degree apartment.

Have the water pipes been emptied as a precaution? Otherwise they’ve all exploded due to being frozen, right?

Man, what are people with children, elderly, or pets doing.

The most ugrent concern is probably for homeless people.

Not for long. Temperatures like the ones you're having will "solve" the homeless problem in days, unless they've got proper winter gear, winter-rated sleeping bags and the skills to keep a fire burning...

Morbid, yes, but you guys should really get into housing-first for taking care of homelessness.

My pets are cold and miserable like us but I don't think they're in any danger of injury. They have thick coats and blankets which go pretty far inside.

> If your house is 25f, put on a couple sweaters and a coat and have a beer. It’s not the end of the world.

Houses were designed very differently 150 years ago.

Lower roofs, fewer windows, huge thick drapes or tapestries on the walls, animal skins or carpets on the floors.

9 ft windows (double pane or not) on all walls is going to leak out a lot of heat.

Most importantly, fireplaces. Houses had fireplaces, and rooms were designed around a central fireplace to keep everyone warm.

I'd be surprised if a 150 year old house was insulated and sealed as well as a 20 year old house, even in Texas.

Though you're right that the old house likely had a wood burning heat source, but I'd imagine that there were times when wood was scarce. And that 150 year old fireplace would have sucked air out of the house, bringing in cold air through every air gap.

I looked it up, and wood has an R-value of around 1.4 per inch, so a log cabin with 6" walls would have an R-value of around R8, current building codes in Texas specify R15 for walls, R38 for roofs.

Single-pane windows have an R-value of around R1, energy efficient double panes, around R4 (triple paned can hit R9) so even though there are a lot more windows in a modern house, they have better insulation.

I imagine plumbing contractors in Texas are rubbing their hands together in glee. Frozen, broken pipes everywhere.

It’s going to take months to get to everyone too. Contractors here are busy enough as it is.

Nope, simply bad housing standards leading to no isolation. Passive houses work in the Scandinavia. This is coming from a Swede who lived for a while in Texan suburbia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house

You can definitely get a passive house in the US; but it's fairly expensive and takes quite a bit of time to pay off.

It also requires somewhat specialized (read: niche and expensive) heating and cooling equipment, since there is so little air movement into and out of the house, and requires so little energy.

Oh, and ironically, when the power's out in a passive house, you need to open a window to ensure you don't over-humidify the house with your breath.

Just better building standards will get you a long way. I live in a house with rather poor energy rating by Swedish standards (E on an A to F scale), yet with 4 people and some sunshine we keep 75m2 (half the house) heated to 20c with -5c outside.

They had wood burning heat sources and they didn't have indoor running water. So, as you say, people could gather around fireplace(s) and there were no actual issues associated with the rest of the house being cold.

But for those being very casual about other people sitting around in 25 degree temperatures, that's actually fairly chilly especially if you don't have the clothing and bed coverings for it. And I say that as someone who lives in New England and has done winter camping.

Could I manage modulo piping concerns? Sure. (And I know you can drain pipes but I'd hate to be in a situation where I felt I had to do so in an emergency situation without electricity and then fire things up again when the electricity came back on.) But you're talking about huddling under covers if you don't have wood burning heat.

We had a heater outage recently, with temperatures at about -20c. More than half the house was heated by our fireplace. It churns out something like 7kw when used properly, which is more than enough for that part of the house.

The other part was fine with one 2kw heater for the night. The whole thing was pretty scary. I'll make sure our next house has 2 fireplaces. One m3 of firewood will keep you going for a couple of days, and more importantly: your pipes won't crack.

My house is 140 years old and it's a sieve with 12 ft ceilings & 9 ft windows... in Iowa.

I have about a 200 yo house in Massachusetts. I've had a lot of work done to tighten it up but it still is very drafty in many spots. It has smallish windows and low ceilings but it's definitely not what you would call well-insulated overall.

Millions of people don't live in suburban homes with grills.

They live in apartments that don't allow grilling so they never thought to buy one. And it being the winter, not many people who do grill in the summer have charcoal for winter grilling.

So when the power goes out, they can't cook anything on their electric ranges. If the water shuts off, that's even worse. Frozen food is useless if you can't even thaw it, let alone cook it.

Initially the weather reports I read said the winter storm warning only extended to Monday afternoon and now it's to Thursday, so lots of people didn't think to extend their emergency supplies to Thursday, and most probably didn't think they'd be without water and power.

I'm really lucky in that I have both water and power, but many are not. You really should not be judging people according to what the most privileged suburbanites can adapt to.

Fun event? Bruh sit this one out.

You obviously don’t live anywhere near texas. No houses have insulation for this kind of weather.

It’s like if I went to Canada and started shitting on people unable to deal with 110f weather without electricity .

Insulation works in both directions. If you use AC a lot in summer, the same insulation is doing you good

Without adding heat, you're still not going to stay warm for long though. my window may have been bent so it couldn't close in winter throughout child hood, but we still had a heater on.

Watch out for your windows. Hanging stuff to act like curtains will help

Doubt it. But keep on shitting on people going through a severe weather disaster to make yourself feel better. Guess you really need it

They died, you fucking ghoul. People rely on things now to live that people would have just died without 150 years ago. They had warmer clothes 150 years ago. They had houses with fireplaces and blankets and coats. We can't deal with this because we are not set up to function when this happens any more. People didn't have the same pets 150 years ago we have now. Reptiles or birds? Dead. I just can't imaging the callousness of this comment. People are literally dying and you're telling them to toughen up. Fucking fool.

More people need to watch “Naked and Afraid” to learn what the human body is capable of withstanding.

A "reality" TV show that selects for people capable of handling the show through rigorous medical examinations is not going to provide an accurate picture on what the average person can handle.

Nah bud, I'm not stoked on grandma on oxygen without power being naked or afraid.

I dug through this dudes post history out of pure morbid curiosity and 9 months ago he claimed that COVID-19 was blown out of proportion because, and I quote, “there haven’t been millions of deaths.”

9 months later and there have been millions of deaths. So, take that how you will.

We’re not ready for this kind of weather here in Texas. I’d you’re so smart you should know people 150 years ago lived differently and built their houses differently

Are you without power? I don’t think so. Real easy to talk shit when you’re warm and comfortable. It’s not like you built any infrastructure or built your house, so don’t take credit for keeping it warm

What’s more is that it’s not only hackers and engineers in this situation. There’s a lot of elderly people, sickly people, families with babies, small animals, and so on, that are far more at risk. I made it the two days but I know some of my neighbors didn’t

The real question is why are so many people rubbing their nuts till they pop with schadenfreude, it’s not just you

Yeah, living here in Canada, when I read the temperatures I had to rub my eyes in disbelief. Temperatures of -30,-40C are by no means unheard of here but we know it will come every winter. I can't imagine a prolonged, unprepared for infrastructure failure, with houses getting down to minus territory indoors. Sounds terrible.

Exactly. Several of us here in Houston are taking refuge at a friend’s house and one person in the group is from Minnesota. She says that even though it’s not so terribly cold outside she still wouldn’t want to repeat this, that it’s much easier in Minnesota because the power doesn’t go out or if it does it’s something that can get fixed quickly rather than be prolonged over several days.

I Finland the electric network companies have spent years and billions of € digging our electric grid underground after we had a few high-profile cases of electricity being cut off during winter because of snow-logged trees crashing on remote power lines.

That happened a lot here, plus tons of burst water pipes and carbon monoxide poisonings. Seriously, nothing here is built for the kind of cold you guys live with.

The first day without power is doable, but that second day is just killer.

They burned wood.

Hate to be an insensitive jerk because people are suffering, but kinda agree.

There was a 3 hour long line at trader Joe's in downtown Austin today. Uber eats has been down maybe 24 hours.

Like....the human body can absorb a 3 to 5 day water only fast reasonably well in most cases and its even becoming trendy in certain longevity circles.

On one hand it points to society getting soft. On the other hand who knows maybe in this pandemic some people really got hit at bad time. As long as no one dies it will all be fine.

> As long as no one dies it will all be fine.

the latest is 10 deaths in the Houston area from some combination of the storm, the cold, and the loss of electricity

Exactly.

Indoors??

Yes, there were sub zero temperatures in Dallas last night.

How badly are your homes insulated that you get internal=external temperature in mere hours???

It has been a day or two, right? (Former Minnesotan, now living in Hong Kong, so slightly out of it, but familiar with -20F/-30C and occasionally -40F/-40C.)

I think enough air circulation to avoid your breath causing mildew everywhere will mean without a ton of thermal mass, your house is going to get within a few degrees of the daily high within a day or two.

It's been going on for a lot more than just a few hours.

Shut off your heat for a couple of days and report back.