By Sheehan Bradshaw

Photo credit: Greg Westfall.

During the month of February, many Americans endured a cold few weeks and faced weather conditions that altered their daily routine. On Tuesday, February 16, the Dallas-Fort Worth area faced record-breaking temperatures for the first time in 72 years. All over the state of Texas, power outages occurred in the middle of the night of February 15-16. In Houston, temperatures reached 13 degrees Fahrenheit. Local San Antonio news reporters stated that the area exceeded over 100 hours of below-freezing temperatures, which has not happened since the early 1950s.

From snow, to hail, to wintry mixes and ice, the East Coast and, surprisingly, the Southwest experienced harsh winter conditions. Over 50 million Americans across the country were hit with a mix of cold weather storms that resulted in power outages, store closings, deaths, and injuries. The week of February 15 was the beginning of severe conditions that ravaged Texas. In total, there were about 4.5 million people without power in Texas for more than a week.

CNN and other news outlets detailed where the ice storm hit and who was affected the most. With winter weather stretching from Texas to Virginia, there were estimates of at least a half an inch of ice across parts of the US. The danger of ice affected roads and power lines.  

Photo credit: Matthew T. Rader via Wikimedia Commons.

CNN stated that one of the main disasters residents faced was the bursting and freezing of water pipes, leaving people without running water for days. At one point, there were 13 million Texans without drinkable water. Those people were advised to boil their water before they drank it. Residents also reported how challenging it was to find necessities at local grocery stores due to the lack of incoming deliveries.

There are plenty of theories as to why Texas and other Southern climates had such cold weather this past February. Scientists who study climate change claim that that Texas’ extreme weather is due to the heating of the Arctic. 

Scientifically, there are theories as to why cold temperatures are showing up in places that are not known for having ice and snow storms. Scientists explained how the polar vortex’s changing pressures is one of the reasons for such ranging temperatures. Polar vortexes are located at the North and South poles, and their purpose is to regulate the cold air pressures and keep the cold air somewhat close to the poles. In some cases, the cold air travels too far south from the Arctic and brings colder weather to North America. This can be due to the deteriorating of the vortex. The breaking away of the vortex causes the jet stream to not travel in its proper direction (usually west to east across the US), and there is not a high amount of pressure. 

Image credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video.

The jet stream is what moves different kinds of precipitations and temperatures across the globe. The jet stream is a strong wind that tends to stay more towards the poles when the Arctic temperatures are consistent. There can be many reasons why the cold air locations are altered. One is that the cold air low pressure forces collide with high pressure winds. This collision changes the pattern of pressures, which can call for unexpected cold or warm fronts. Due to the warming of the Arctic caused by global warming, the warm air is pushing the colder air farther south, which results in rare ice and snow storms in the southern US, like those that occurred in Texas in mid-February. 

There are many reasons to why the power outages in Texas were so severe, and one of them is how Texas is on its own grid system. The Texas (EROCT) grid is separate from the large grid that connects the Eastern part of the country to the Western part of the country (called the Eastern Interconnection and the Western Interconnection.) Since it is on its own grid, Texas is known for not being as reliable as the grids that connect the other parts of the country together. Unexpected weather can affect the Texas grid severely. 

Photo credit: Greg Westfall.

NBC News discussed the recent ice disaster and mentioned President Joseph Biden’s plan to help Texas the next time a harmful winter incident occurs. The Biden administration is working on investing two trillion dollars in infrastructure that will help Texas, as well as other southern states, to be more equipped for harsh weather conditions. The hope for this investment is to gradually advance America to rely more on solar power generation and other renewable sources of energy, rather than a grid system.

Climate change scientists see how this weather is affecting these areas now and know that it will most likely continue to aggressively strike America. When signing his January executive order on climate change, Biden explained how important it is: “In my view, we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can’t wait any longer.” One Biden administration goal is to be completely reliable on renewable energy by the year 2035, using alternative energy that is less harmful to our environment. 

Featured image credit: Matthew T. Rader via Wikimedia Commons.

MORE TEXAS FREEZE COVERAGE from The Match: Elyse Cram interviewed residents in Texas cities about their February blackout experiences.