How Texas Couldn’t Handle The Polar Vortex

How three events lead to a severe winter storm that texas couldn’t handle.

In Mid February, cold arctic air moved south.  It’s called a “Polar Vortex.” It’s pretty common. What was different, it went so far south it reached texas. Since it was February, typically it’s warm.  It was somewhere below 10 degrees celsius. Texans left and right died inside of their homes and cars trying to stay warm. This also wasn’t the first time.  It happened in 1998 and 2011.

Something that you don’t Know is that States give out power in case of an outage. It’s called an Interconnection, and all the states have it except for Texas.  For example, Oklahoma, one of the states also hit by the storm, lost power but could get power from neighboring states.   Because of this, they didn’t have to suffer. Another example NYC also gets its power from neighboring states (from Canada too) because of the interconnection. Texas Soley relies on its own power supply. Natural gas 46% Wind 23% Nuclear 11% Coal 18%.  The natural gas majority has water vapor and froze overtime during mid-February. The Fed commission recommended they do this to ensure reliability during weather conditions.  Many did, but it was optional, so private companies and most of Texas didn’t follow protocol.

The Final Reason is that Climate change will soon become more extreme over time. There has been a 60% to 70% increase in extreme weather because of this. It was so recent that it lead to texas having the same issue back in 2011. If Texas doesn’t start to change and follow the rules, there’s a good chance it will be left in the dark, chilly cold.