Rare Winter Storm Tests Texas Grid, Triggers Blizzard Warning in Louisiana

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Rare Winter Storm Tests Texas Grid, Triggers Blizzard Warning in Louisiana

A rare winter storm has triggered a blizzard warning in Louisiana, calls for record snow in New Orleans and transmission warnings for the Texas grid. The low pressure weather system is bringing bitter cold from Texas to North Carolina, causing disruptions to passenger rail travel and airline flights throughout the region as snow sweeps across […]

A rare winter storm has triggered a blizzard warning in Louisiana, calls for record snow in New Orleans and transmission warnings for the Texas grid.

The low pressure weather system is bringing bitter cold from Texas to North Carolina, causing disruptions to passenger rail travel and airline flights throughout the region as snow sweeps across the US South.

“The system is going to drop a blanket of snow across the entire Gulf south,” Donald Jones, a weather service meteorologist. “It will be followed by another strong cold front and even more cold temperatures — it is very unusual for the Gulf Coast.”

Wind gusts of up to 35 miles (56 kilometers) an hour and heavy snow prompted the first blizzard warning ever for the area from Port Arthur, Texas to Lafayette, Louisiana. Snow fell as far south as Brownsville, Texas on the border with Mexico.

A wide area from central Texas through the Florida Panhandle is forecast to receive 3 to 6 inches of snow (8 to 15 centimeters), including a record 4 inches in Houston and an all-time high of as much as 8 inches in New Orleans, according to the National Weather Service. The snow should start to taper off by midday.

More than 50 cold temperature records may be broken or tied. mainly across the Gulf Coast up the Appalachian Mountains and across the Ohio Valley through Thursday, according to the Weather Prediction Center. There’ll likely be significant icing across northern Florida.

The frigid weather, which will moderate through the week, is expected to drive up electricity demand and may crimp natural gas and oil production due to freezing water in wells and pipelines. As the freeze gripped West Texas, temperatures in Odessa — the middle of the oil-rich Permian basin — lingered at 13F (-11C) early Tuesday.

Texas Grid Woes

The Texas electrical grid has a weather watch in place for Tuesday — an early alert that extreme cold driving up heating needs may strain supplies. The state grid operator, Electric Reliability Council of Texas, also issued a transmission emergency alert at 5 a.m. local time for the south and southeastern part of the state “for loss of transmission from freezing precipitation,” according to a website notice. More than 40,000 customers, mainly in south Texas, were without electricity as of about 9 a.m. local time, according to the PowerOutage.us website.

Ercot said peak electricity demand is forecast to climb, hitting about 78.7 gigawatts on Tuesday evening. Projections have been volatile and at times have shown demand may test the winter record of 78.3 gigawatts set last January, though the grid operator expects to have enough supply to meet demand.

Snow and ice has snarled transportation throughout the region. Houston airports, including George Bush Intercontinental, William P. Hobby and Ellington, were closed shortly after midnight. Most Tuesday flights at Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans were canceled. Many highways and roads across Louisiana became impassible overnight and were closed, including portions of Interstate 10.

Airline tracking service FlightAware reported that 1,987 flights around the US were canceled as of about 10 a.m. New York time. Amtrak had scrubbed multiple trains out of Chicago and throughout the Gulf Coast, the federally funded passenger rail carrier said on its website.

The deep freeze will start to dissipate later in the week, with temperatures rising into the 50 degrees Fahrenheit range in Houston Friday and near 70F in Lake Charles, Louisiana by Sunday, according to Jones.

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