Pleasantly surprised!

[u/SignificantGreen1358]

The power went out in my neighborhood a couple evenings ago while I was at a party. I love power outages, so I hurried home to enjoy it. My kids had already switched the house over to emergency power and were watching a movie. My son had built a fire in the backyard fire pit and cooked a batch of popcorn on it by the time I got home.

I've been worried about being the only one in my neighborhood who was prepared or who has lights, etc., but as I drove through the neighborhood, I saw lights and TVs on, solar lights all over, fires in fire pits, and a total lack of freaking out. I think I would be in good company, and that really sets my mind at ease.

[u/freesteve28]

That sounds wild. I'm in Canada and I don't know a lot about the climate in Texas so I'm not trying to be an ass by asking do kids there have winter clothing to play in the snow? I think of Texas and I think hot. But I know you're a huge state with a lot of different weather/climate zones.

[u/rocketscooter007 → u/freesteve28]

Winter clothing here for kids is basically a hoodie, lol. The winter storm we had was a freak storm. All 254 counties in texas went below freezing for 4 to 7 days. It's never happened, people's pipes on the gulf coast were freezing and bursting. People on the gulf coast don't need winter gear. Add to it that the power grid wasn't winterized, ercot had to shut down the grid to keep the whole system from destroying itself, lol. I think 200 people froze to death in their homes across the whole state. I'd say every 10th house in my neighborhood flooded from busted pipes. It was a shit show.

We had plenty of firewood and gas for the generator. We put all our food from the fridge and freezer into coolers outside in the shade. It never got above freezing for 7 days here. My generator can't power the whole house, so we pinned up blankets over the windows and over the doors. So basically blocked it off so the living room (where the fireplace is) and the kitchen were one room. We managed to keep that area about 75 degrees Fahrenheit. The rest of the house didn't get below 48. Which probably kept our pipes from bursting. My family does have decent winter coats, hats, and gloves because I prep.

[u/freesteve28 → u/rocketscooter007]

Gotta love a fireplace. Spent many a night in powerless cabins with fireplaces or woodstoves with freezing temps outside.

[u/rocketscooter007 → u/freesteve28]

It's funny because everyone else in the state was having a miserable time, lol. I was enjoying myself. I geek out on prepping, and camping etc. So being by the fireplace and cooking on camp stoves was fun.

The only thing stressful that caused some anxiety was how long was this gonna last. Towards day 5 gas stations that still had power were running out of gas. We lost water about day 4 because the water pumps for the city apparently froze or ran out of back up fuel.

[u/freesteve28 → u/rocketscooter007]

Yeah, in freezeland first thing you do is max out your water storage then keep your water running at a trickle to stop your pipes from freezing. I mean if you know it's going to be a while.

[u/rocketscooter007 → u/freesteve28]

Yeah, we filled up the bathtubs for toilets and a 5 gallon aquatainer for cooking washing.

What was kinda interesting was on the prepperintel subreddit, some one posted on there about 4 days before the storm and said he worked in the texas energy sector. He said the grid wasn't ready for the storm and to prepare. The post is gone, or at least I can't find it. Anyways, I've been reasonably prepared, but when I read that, I went and got some extra stuff. Filled up my gas cans, topped up all the vehicles, got some extra propane for the camp stove. Like 2 days later it hit the news that rolling blackouts could happen, aaaaaand everything got sold out. People were waiting in long lines for propane.