I'm from Houston, TX, and I'll never forget the freeze. My daughter was 4 years old. We had gone to Walmart to get a few supplies, and a we were turning the corner in our neighborhood, my husband's phone rang. It was our neighbor who said he heard a loud noise in our house. When we opened the front door, water started pouring out of the house. The pipes had burst and the house was flooding. It's was about 2 or 3 inches of water. Our dog was home. It was about 12 degrees F outside, which is UNHEARD OF in SE Texas. We didn't have power for a few days but thank God my neighbor had a generator outside and he fed an extension cord over the fence into our back yard so we could have a little power. But our ceiling had caved in when the pipes burst and the draft from the attic was horrible. I hope to never have to go through that again. But Texas is not prepared for anything. Hurricane Beryl just came through here a few days ago and there are people still without power and it's the middle of July! It's hot as hell outside! I'm glad my family didn't lose power but so many of my coworkers and other family did. It's a mess out here.

My daughter called me from Buda, texas ( outside san antonio) to ask me what to do to save her outside plants. I asked her why she was calling about cold weather. She said they were exspecting -17 degrees. I told her to forget her plants and save her house. That low tempreture is unheard of and houses are not designed for it.

My cousin was one of the people that was in that pile up. She’s a nurse. Was on her way to work. She didn’t know it at the time but she was 2 months pregnant. She ended up lodged under an 18 wheeler. She had to escape the car and jump the concrete barrier in the median before the car behind her slammed into her own car which lodged it even further under the 18 wheeler. She probably would’ve died had she not gotten out.

I have been waiting so long for you to react to this! I’m from Fort Worth and let me tell you, this video doesn’t do it justice. It’s was a terrible time. No power, no water for days. Luckily I had my roommate so I wasn’t alone but my 93 year grandmother was also stuck at her home alone, no power. We almost lost her as she developed pneumonia along with the dehydration and lack of food. Thank you for reacting to this. It became a core memory for me and I’m sure many others.

Houston, Texas. The governing body in Texas refuses to fortify the grid, still. One of our senators in Washington decided it was too cold in Texas, so he flew his family, and himself to Cancun. Once news of his trip made headlines, he flew himself back to Texas. He then claimed he flew his family there, and just went along to help them get “settled in.” That didn’t sit well with freezing Texans. We still refer to him as “Senator of Cancun.” 😡😞

My husband and I were part of "Snovid 2021." We lost power and water for 4 days. We went and gathered snow to be able to use our toilet. I've never been that cold in my life. Luckily, I keep all quilts and blankets, so we were able to stay warm that way. But we also had 3 layers of clothes on. I never want to go through that again.

Interesting that it wasn’t mentioned that the TX representatives either left the state or were extremely slow to respond.

Fort Worth here. That video doesn’t really do it Justice. It was baaad! I remember waking up and there was no power. It was something like -18 degrees Celsius outside. I had my fire place going but definitely didn’t have enough wood for a week. Even with the fire place going, my place was freezing. I was contemplating what furniture to cut up when the weather let up a bit and I saw a window and made a very scary drive to my friends house who had power. It was normally 50 minutes away, but took over 3 hours because of the road conditions. I’m also a teacher so we coordinate getting blankets n food to some of students in need. Some were really bad off. That all happened before the second storm hit, which really shut everything down. My place didn’t have power for a week, water for 2 weeks. Honestly, I got off pretty easy compared to many others. All in all, good times 😔

Im in Houston, and after the 3rd day My apartment had dipped below freezing and was colder on the inside than on the outdoors. On the 2nd day of below freezing temps in my apartment I finally had to go to a shelter for heat and food. Im originally from the north east and experienced several major snow storms, so I knew basic winter survival, but quickly realized how much states with winter weather have a winter culture, with plenty of winter weather resources easily available (clothes, accessories for handling ice, portable kerosine heaters, etc) that i took for granted. Unfortunately most of my neighbors had never seen snow before, or experience below freezing temps for more than a few hours, let alone days. It was bad

What was unique about this situation was that the entire state (which is HUGE) had sub-freezing temperatures at the same time. I've never known for the whole state to be freezing. It's very unusual for south Texas to experience freezing temps. So the electrical grid was stressed to the limit. We were very lucky not to lose power. For 11 days, we were on edge, wondering if and when we'd lose power. The pipes in our master bath froze, but by some miracle, my husband went under the house and found a valve that shut off the water only in the master bath. So we were able to use water in the rest of the house. We got about as lucky as we could possibly have been. So many others were not so fortunate.

Southern states rarely have snow/ice, and when they do, they're not as experienced in clearing the roads. This example was horrible. Also take a look at Atlanta Snowmageddon of 2014. Snow/ice started mid-morning, after the schools were in session and everyone was at work. Once it started, it didn't stop, and roads became impassable because the traffic wouldn't allow plow trucks to help. People spent the night in their cars on the interstates, completely stuck. Totaled about 2.5 inches. That's all to shut down a major city.

Im in DFW. I remember our excitement for snow turning into a 4 day struggle to keep our family warm. We had no power or gas. We had no running water which resulted in 30+ breaks in the pipes. The toilet water even froze. It was an extremely stressful time, the whole family was barricaded in a single room and I was sleep deprived because I was constantly checking on the kids (and cat) and making sure they were warm enough. We have an emergency kit that is much better suited for winter emergencies now but I still get anxiety when I see snow in the forecast.

I lived east of Dallas at the time this storm hit. It truly was insane. Our state is used to heat. Everything here is built for heat and hurricanes, not cold. I was raised in South East Texas. I had never even seen snow that deep in person before. I was one of the lucky ones, we had power and water the whole time and because I grew up on the coast I had prepared like it was a hurricane. That said, we stayed home and my neighborhood jumped to and started helping each other. Since I had power, I let people charge their phones. Someone else was bringing around firewood to those who needed it, others brought food and water to those in need. I had a plan just in case my house lost power (6 people). It was terrifying knowing that some family members, not at my house, needed power for cpaps and they had no power. They were too far away to get to my house.

My mother died during the "Texas Ice Age." She slipped on the ice at work on Thursday morning, hitting her head on a metal handrail and the concrete when she fell. I picked her up from the ER where every room was full of people with head injuries. They checked her out and said she was OK, but apparently she had a slow bleed. She collapsed at work that next Monday and was gone.😭

As a Texan, I can only remember twice it had really snowed at all for me in the 20 years I've lived here before this storm. And those were practically nothing compared to this. I had no idea what was about to happen. I was thankful I didn't have to leave my apartment the entire time. My mom's house ended up flooded because her pipes burst in the attick, and a bedroom ceiling collapsed. Apparently, a raccoon had taken shelter up there, so when the ceiling fell, so did he. She and her cat ended up living with me in my 1 bedroom apartment for 10 months.

I am crying while watching this. Living through it was awful. I'm just north of Dallas. We didn't have rolling blackouts at my house. As soon as the power went out in the middle of the night, my husband turned on the gas fireplace. We had it running the whole time. The power would come on for about 20 minutes in the middle of the night. That's it. We were cooking in our fireplace. Our neighbors ran an extension cord from their truck to our house so we could charge phones to keep in touch with family. My family in the Austin area were without water for days. Luckily, because we stayed home and kept tabs on our pipes, we did good there. Several of our neighbors had burst pipes and even gas leaks. Every time we get below freezing or our temps get over 100, I fear we're going to go through it again.

I live in Austin and my apartment was hit pretty hard during the Icepocolypse of 2021. The tough part about it was that there was so much ice, you couldn't drive anywhere for about 6 days (for me, with the hills and such). Then it snowed and the ground was covered about 12 inches of snow, which didn't melt for about 5 days. This is the worst winter storm I've seen in Texas in my 54 years here. We're used to cold spells for about 2 or 3 days at most, then it gets warm again. And nothing here is really built for freezing temperatures, so we just stay home for a day or two and all is well. But this one lasted 7 days and we were screwed. My electricity held up for the first two days, but the huge oak trees all throughout the complex were iced over and started breaking off huge branches onto cars and fences and blocked all access for emergency vehicles, which was kind of scary. It was dropping down to 11 degrees at night. My heat was electric, so when that went out it got down to about 25 degrees in parts of my house. I was sitting at my kitchen table admiring the icicles that had formed on the windows, when I realized they were actually on the inside! Mostly it was just scary because it's just me and my cat. The neighbors were close by, but the nights were long and eerily quiet and dark. I mostly read books by candlelight. I was really lucky that I have a gas stove in the kitchen, so I could cook some things and boil water. When the electricity went out, it was out for 5 days, so no internet, lights, and we had to save phone/texting for emergencies since we couldn't recharge anything. They told us to expect rolling blackouts, where electricity would go out for a few hours, then come back on, but for most of us in Austin, when it went out, it was out for days and days. I was doing all right, but then the pipes froze and I went 2 days without water. We had bottled water, and then melted snow to flush toilets before the ice melted enough to drive to a hotel. It was getting pretty medieval. Even at the hotel, the water pressure was really low, so you couldn't really take a shower. I was there for 8 days as they made repairs to my apartment and got the electricity and water back on, mostly. It took them 8 weeks to get water running again in my kitchen, which really sucked. I was one of the lucky ones, though, as many people died or their houses burned or were flooded. Lots of people's pipes would freeze, which expanded them and cracked them, so when the ice melted, there was a lot of flood damage to homes. I thought the sovereign immunity that the Texas Supreme Court gave Ercot was bullshit. And I don't think they've done anything to improve the grid to prepare for another event. My apartment hasn't changed anything (provided better insulation, windows, or even carbon monoxide alarms), though they did raise our rents by 40% the following year to pay for all the damages costs, or so they said.

A lot of people who did use gas still lost all power because the gas lines froze. Lines in Texas aren't buried very deep because it had never frozen for that long as it did that year. We were really lucky in that we did not lose power for a long time. But since we live at the bottom of a hill, we couldn't get out of our neighborhood unless we went on foot. And even if the grocery stores were open, we didn't want to risk walking there. Not many people have carbon monoxide detectors. We installed them after this freeze. We also installed solar and batteries, just in case this ever happened again.

Texas is not used to such extreme cold weather. I will bet most Texans have ever felt temperatures well below freezing for more than a couple of days. It's just like the UK is not used to extreme heat and so many people died due to that heat several years ago. The UK did not require that every home get air con because it is not that common to heat up that much. Once temperatures get that low pipes freeze and everything becomes brittle and somethings just stop working. Since it was the first time ever that cold, there was noting to really do. Black ice cased that huge accident and nothing can be done with black ice. Just stay home because you cannot see it at all. And once you hit that ice at any speed, you will lose control of your car, truck or van. It is the scariest thing about driving in the winter. Snow is bad but black ice is deadly I grew up in NY State I am glad I did because the state gets both extremely hot and cold temperatures. Getting both extremes very often teaches you how to survive and handle both hot and cold weather.

House carbon dioxide detectors in most homes here are battery powered

Dallas Texan here 🙋🏻‍♀️I remember feeling a multitude of emotions throughout that time. The first day or two of the snow fall, I remember being in awe of the sheer amount of snow we got. It was like real snow, not “Texas snow” that we normally get, which is sleet, shlushy “snow” and then it al turns to ice 😂 Once things started getting worse I remember feeling nervous, even scared to leave my apartment. I refused to go back to work until most of the roads were cleared up. My boss made me use PTO for that 🙃 I also felt a tremendous amount of guilt because my roommate and I never once lost power or our water access. We lived right next to a bunch a medical centers and hospitals so we shared their energy grid, which are always labeled as “essential”. I would lay in my bed, all snug and warm, watching the chaos unfold online and just feel so guilty that I’m perfectly warm and safe while others, even my family, who lived just a few miles away from me, had no power. I’m so glad to see you covering this. Many need to realize just how devastating this was for our state. So many ppl on TikTok were making fun of us saying we were all being dramatic about “a little bit of snow”. The national news sources back then horrifically downplayed the total of fatalities from this event. I was FURIOUS.

The car pile up happened was on the major higway in Fort Worth. ERCOT was a joke. Not one of the people on the ERCOT board was in Texas.

I also live in DFW. Our homes in Texas are built to withstand the heat and milder winters. Not a full blizzard. Windows cracked in many homes, including mine. I was lucky my water heater was over my garage, and I had a small leak. Others’ homes were flooded when their water heaters broke. It was really terrible. ERCOT has had a lot to answer for in the following years.

I'm in north TX. This video fails to talk about the 3-6 FEET of snow that fell between the two winter storms during the polar vortex. We called it the Snowmagedon of 2021! Our temperature did get down to -9°F and the wind chill was around -21°F. My family's house was lucky to be on the same electrical grid as one of our city's hospitals, so we only lost power for 2 hours before it was up and running again, and I had already cooked a big pot of chilli and a pot of beef stew. Both of which made 5 meals for my family of 5( I know, but for some reason, I just can't seem to make small batches of food). When the power went out, I pulled out over 20 blankets from all over the house, and the kids were like, "Where did you get all of them?" I said, "What? Do you think my crochet hooks are just for decoration? " Let's just say everyone (human and pets) was able to stay warm that week due to Nana's hobbies of cooking and crafting!

Had to boil snow for water but got off light compared to my mom who lost water and power. She was so listless when I talked to her, I convinced her to start a fire in her wood-burning stove with a leaky pipe because warmth was a bit more important. She cracked her window to let the smoke out, but had asthma problems for several weeks after. You better believe she had that wood-burning stove fixed by the next winter. Also, OMG how did I miss that the Hilton fire was during the freeze?

I worked for one of the city’s utilities a month afterward. The people working there told their higher ups what they need to do to keep water flowing but they were ignored, the water issues were easily avoidable.

Hi! From Austin, Texas here. I was living in a very run down apartment when this happened. I was without power for 7 days and out of water for 8. We couldn't get out of complex parking lot because it was a solid sheet of ice and no one (not even jacked up jeeps) could get traction. Me and my neighbor trudged over a mile to a shopping complex in hopes that something was open. About the 4th day, a little mom and pop Mexican restaurant across the street broke out their grills and we were able to get hot food. I had been eating vegetables out of a can for days. At one point it was 36 degrees in my apartment. There was quite literally nothing to do except sleep and read. Me and my cats kept each other warm under every single blanket I owned. I shoved towels in every crack of every door and every window in desperation. The apartment building next to mine caught fire due to a candle. It was one of the craziest things I've ever been through. . Meanwhile, our senator hopped on a plane to Mexico with his family....people died...Fast forward a year later and we had another mini-freeze. I was out of power for days. Texas needs to drop its ego and get off its own power grid

One of the things that wasn’t mentioned in the video was that people froze to death. Not just homeless people but also people in their homes with no fireplace or heat source. The rolling blackouts caused electricity in my area to only come on for a few minutes to a few hours. Definitely not long enough to heat a home. Many people I know do not have proper winter jackets or clothes. Good thing my family went on vacation to Seattle during the winter a few yrs prior, so we had proper winter clothes. We also had a fireplace and plenty of canned food bc since 2020 my mom has been preparing for a potential ongoing food shortage. We even have a backup freezer for extra frozen food too. We were more fortunate than most. Our pipes didn’t freeze either bc we found a way to keep them warm.

My uncle and grampa were in that 100+ vehicle pile up on I35W in Fort Worth. When the bottom falls out of the temperature here, we get black ice which looks like dry road.

Hi, I’m from San Angelo, Texas & -1 in 2021, the deep freeze, snowmageddon was horrible. Hotels were full, but because of our animals we decided to ride the storm out. I had just gotten over Covid & returned to work only to be sent home due to the approaching storm. Prior to losing power I had a roast in the oven, my dishwasher running & a load of laundry in the washer. Needless to say the roast had to be thrown away, I manually had to empty water from my dishwasher & washing machine to avoid stale water smells. Our living room became our fortress & our fireplace our only source of heat. We were on our last log when our power was restored & my husband contemplated using planks from our privacy fence if power was not restored. Our fireplace not only kept us warm, it was also our stove. My husband & son took shifts to keep the fire going. I am glad I collect quilts because we used every one we had & lived in many layers of clothing during the week without power. This is not something we would have ever been prepared for, it would have never crossed our minds that something like this would happen. Yes, it had been 100 years since the last deep freeze but had no idea it could get as bad as it got. Although we will probably never live to see this happen again, nor will our children or grandchildren, we made sure to purchase a generator, & changed our wood burning fireplace to gas. Whether we experience another outage due to a freeze or high temps we will be prepared as will many Texans across the state. What I learned is that we are resilient, & as neighbors we came together helping each other. We did manage to drive a very treacherous drive to the grocery to find soup but not much of anything else. A treacherous drive to McDonald’s where my husband & son sat in line for an hour to get cheeseburgers made it home safely but had a false hope as they saw houses with power & others without. Yes, 4 houses down from us & the next block had power but we did not, it was bittersweet, we were on the wrong side of the grid, something I never imagined was possible. I had friends who lost loved ones, livestock & other animals. When the snow started to melt we found birds who perished. We had running water but did not use, instead we thankfully had plenty of bottled water that actually froze sitting on our counters, it was truly colder inside our home than outside. While we could not use our bedrooms I was awestruck when I sat on the rock that is my memory foam mattress, yes, it was frozen solid. While our pipes did not freeze our daughter returned to her home to find burst pipes. The only way to charge our cell phones was in our car & that is when we saw elderly neighbors getting in their cars to stay warm. Night looked like day because of the snow & we lost track of time, hard to fathom. To say that Texans are not resilient, after this ordeal, is an understatement, we took care of each other & our neighbors & as a family became closer. The pictures we were able to take are memories we will never forget. Thank you for taking an interest in what happened here.

We were so lucky. We have a pier and beam foundation, so our pipes are underneath the house. They are also flex tubing, not PVC like most of them, so our pipes didn't burst, and we had water. So many of our friends had to go to the bayou to collect water just to be able to flush the toilet. Other friends used the backyard as a toilet. Texas wasn't prepared for this because we don't get this type of weather. The coldest it has ever been here is the blizzard of 1899. 1899. This is why we aren't prepared. Hurricane, we are experts at that. Which is good since Beryl is going to hit somewhere on the TX coast.

In San Antonio the rolling black outs were so bad. We literally had no power for 8-10 hours and then our power would turn on for a couple of hours then shut off again. We tried to charge everything we could when we had power, and we all slept in one bedroom covered in every blanket we had in our home. We also slept in so many layers of sweaters, sweat pants, socks, beanies and gloves. I hope & pray that we NEVER experience that ever again.

The irony of reliving this whilst now dealing with the aftermath of hurricane Beryl and once again, lack of preparedness and power outages that are for some people going to last the entire week+ in 100F weather. This ice/snow event was awful. I was with my parents who were in their late 70s, and as a child, there is no worse feeling than seeing your parents huddled together for warmth with every single blanket in the house just trying to survive. Unlike heat related events, you can't just walk outside and find a bit of relief because you'll die out there, and you'll die inside. I remember starting the day feeling so giddy and happy because we never get snow, and then next thing you know, everyone is fighting for their lives to find power, to find gas, to stay warm, to make sure people don't die in garages and from fumes from the few that did have generators. We had to relocate to our car and just sit in the drive with the heater on and take small shifts because you also didn't want to run out of gas in case of who knows what. My aunt eventually got power so we went for an hour long drive to get there with people sliding on and off the road, only for her power to fail at 4 am in the morning. It was miserable, and now dealing with power issues all over again with hurricane Beryl and people are so hot and miserable, it's just an annoyance like no other and its no joke because these are life threatening things. People die needlessly in these situations, and my heart always goes out to those infirmed or with disabilities who struggle.

Not exactly related, but in my parents' neighborhood in Florida, my dad had a lot of charcoal for cooking out. After a particularly bad hurricane, they lost power. Neighbors were desperate to cook food they had in the fridge/freezer before it thawed and went bad. So he kept the coals going on a Weber Grill, and neighbors brought over whatever they had and cooked it. The grill was in a carport, so open (no garage door), so no worries about gasses, but covered to keep the coals going (it still rained a bit after the storm left). Just neighbors taking care of each other.

In our home, we didn't have an issue with drinking water because we already had a lot of bottled water in the house. We pulled our charcoal grill to the driveway and used that for breakfast & dinner. We didn't lose much food because our power didn't go off in the beginning when everybody else's did, so our deep freezer in the cold garage was somewhat ok, as long as we didn't repeatedly open it. We just pulled out what was needed for that day. My family wasn't in too bad a shape during this time since we are from Chicago, and used to some of the winter precautions that we were usually bombarded with every winter on the news while living in Chicago.

I live in Dfw, Texas and was blessed. We had rolling blackouts at my house for 3 days. It was approximately 45 min of electricity and 30 min of blackout. Only one pipe burst. However, my sister's house flooded and no electricity for 5 days. Poor sis, I offerred for her to come but the roads were so bad it was unsafe.

Houstonian here. The deep freeze was completely out of the ordinary. We went 2 days without power (we were lucky). It was the worst power outage I had seen in my 32 years in Houston until Beryl now. Our grid has been extremely fragile since the freeze it wasn’t even this bad power wise for Allison, Ike, & Harvey (other major storms). But Beryl has been the worst there are many people on day 6 with no power. Some have even been told they won’t get power for another week

I'm from Sherman Oaks, CA, been living in TX for nearly 7 years. This was unlike anything I ever experienced in my life!! Never lost power, but no water for weeks because the pipes in my 1920s garage apartment burst!! ❄️

The raw videos from that Interstate 35 pileup in Ft Worth are horrific. There is a rise in the highway before the point of the pileup making it virtually invisible to approaching motorists and operators of tractor trailers. Many were traveling well above speeds appropriate for the road conditions and became unstoppable upon reaching the ice. It was sickening the see the speed and violence of the collisions knowing people were being killed.

I still don't understand why power companies aren't forced to insulate their pipelines. That's the very least they can do.

It was brutal. I live in south Texas and was without power or water for days. It was bizarre driving at night with no light anywhere

I am right outside of Houston, Tx. My youngest son was 3 months old and my other two were 4 and 8….it was an adventure to say the least. I got all the blankets in my house and covered all doors and windows to insulate. It was 28 degrees INSIDE my home before all was said and done. I used candles and terracotta pots flipped upside down to warm us up as much as possible; it works surprisingly well if you have more than one. I was born and raised here..I don’t do cold weather. I’d prefer our almost 120 degree summers daily over ever going through that again.

Carbon monoxide detectors are not placed in garages or any place that is not living quarters and can be ventilated like a garage.

It was the day after Valentine's Day, so many people who had slept over at their partners' houses were stuck with them for days - including the maintenance officer of my student dorm. He had to walk me through how to shut the main water valve off after 6 pipes broke in the laundry and dormroom areas of the building. It was also still COVID, so we had to figure out how to house the displaced students without having multiple people in close proximity to each other. My dorm didn't lose power or water, but most of the other student dorms in our non-profit organization did. We created a mutual aid structure in which food was removed from fridges in dorms that had no power and stored outside in "igloos" until they could be picked up by those of us who had AWD vehicles. The food was slowly driven to my dorm and one other that still had power and water, where a team of masked and face-shield wearing students were cooking for 500 and where huge pots of water were boiled day and night (with gas). The boiled water and cooked food was then distributed back to the dorms with no power. Students in exterior rooms who had no power were moved between buildings. Luckily COVID meant our organization had low occupancy and there ended up being enough rooms for all the displaced students. We collected jackets, blankets, food, and water from the dorms and delivered them to a group of homeless people who had taken residence in an empty building nearby. It was a scary time, but I was proud to see my fellow Texans rise to the occasion

Let me say this, it was as cold as a witch's tit. I went to turn up the thermostat, the static electricity in my body caused a short circuit. I survived by using heavy quilts, and space heater during the day, at night I bundled up. I have a 4 x 4 and went to Walmart, they couldn't take cash, all the food I could get was cheetos, pizza, and ground turkey. Now the state will not let ERCOT take power plants off for maintenance during inclement weather

Texas I’m the summer is like 100-110 usually…. Our winters can be bipolar but sometimes that jet stream dips low and stays and we aren’t as prepared for that…. I was lucky as my power didn’t stay off for too long.

We were pissed! In Texas, we are used to the blistering heat. Not the severe freeze. My friend in Minnesota said she was running to the store in waist-high snow like it was nothing that day. ERCOT told us there would be 'rolling blackouts' that would only last 'half an hour so' as not to put a 'strain on the entire grid.' When our power went off, we waited and waited and then realized the power was not coming back on again. Our HOA president was a hero. Sam and several men were out for hours and hours helping neighbors. That's TEXAS! Neighbors that had generators invited neighbors over. Everyone brought food from their freezers. We played cards and ate stew. If you had gas, you were okay during the day. But when it was time to sleep, we had to turn the gas off. After it was all over, we have attorneys in the neighborhood that make sure our politicians heard.

I will tell you this. I suffered terribly as a result of this deep freeze. It was hard to find food… it was literally 20 degrees… I didn’t have power for like 7 days. No water. People died trying to keep warm. I was so cold I didn’t think I would survive. I had on 3 pairs of socks, leggings, pants, jeans, 3 shirts, sweater, coats, hat, and I was still cold! The government failed us!!! We suffered while our Senator got on an airplane to Cancun!

From San Antonio here. When the freeze started, I had just come home from the hospital after being on the ventilator due to COVID. I was home, but required to be on oxygen. On day 2 of the freeze, we lost power due to the rolling blackouts in our area. The oxygen machine connected to the power outlet of course shut off, forcing me to use the portable tanks of which I had two. I ran out of oxygen on the 3rd day. My brother had to stay up all night to make sure I didn’t stop breathing in the middle of the night and if the power would come back on, he would put the oxygen on me and I couldn’t move from my spot on the couch at all. But then the power stopped coming back on. My mom had to push me into the bathroom in my wheelchair and help transfer me if I needed to go to the bathroom bc without oxygen I couldn’t even stand by myself. It was horrible. On the 4th day, we were getting so cold that we had to risk the drive going to my sister’s house bc amazingly she still had power and I could finally use my oxygen again. It was such a crazy and scary experience to contemplate my possible death on a daily basis that whole time after just surviving being on the ventilator and covid. I’m so glad and thankful that I am still here.

It can get pretty cold in north Texas, and I've seen it ice over for several days before, but this was insane. And it wasn't just north Texas this time, it wa pretty much the entire state. I lived in Houston for a decade, and I saw snow once, for about ten minutes before it melted. This would be akin to an F5 tornado hitting L.A.

I'm from Austin and we lost power for 4 days. Thank God Almighty that my daughter did not lose power with 2 little ones needing warmth. We did not lose our water supply but my daughter did. My son in law had the idea of melting snow on the stove for water. We kept our food in the snow to keep our food from spoiling. I hope that never happens again. I'm glad my husband and I had each other for warmth and lots of blankets!!!

I’m in DFW area. We had two frozen pipes, one of which burst. Power started going out around 1:30am on Monday. By Tuesday morning, it was 42 degrees Fahrenheit on the SECOND floor of our house. It was even colder on the first floor. I’ve lived in northern states and have never been so scared as I was by this storm. Our houses aren’t built for weather like this. We have pipes on exterior walls and they aren’t buried that deeply in the ground. So water mains were breaking in the area too.

Houston here. We were extremely lucky and only lost power for 2 hours during this storm. We had sheets and blankets up over windows to try and help insulate. We usually only see a few days in winter that warrant a hard freeze warning and they don't stick around. Fast forward to now, we just just went through the opposite disaster. Cat 1 Hurricane Beryl took caused power outages for nearly 3 million customers and there's a lot still waiting for restoration in 100+ degree temps. We were out for 6 days.

San Antonian here. It was a nightmare. I never lost power at my apartment but didn't have water for almost two weeks because so many pipes burst at the complex. So I stayed with friends but they didn't have power initially. The nights were miserably cold. The roads were treacherous. The winters since "snowvid" have been scary. I never want to experience that again.

There’s a lot of fact and a bit of fiction in this video. I live in the south plains of Texas and at that time ERCOT hadn’t extended their disastrous mismanagement of the power grid to our part of the state. We were without power for 4 1/2 hours total in the town I live in due to icing causing a transmission line to break. We are members of an electric cooperative and they did an outstanding job. Not sure what they were talking about that it was the first time in history that a “wind chill” warning has been issued. Maybe for that part of the state, but certainly not true for this area. This part of the state, Lubbock north to Oklahoma, can see some bitterly cold weather. I used to have an outdoors job and remember a stretch where we had three straight days of below 0 wind chill, one of those days we had an air temperature of -11 and windchills of -31 when I arrived at work. The winter storm of 2021 was record breaking and extremely bad, but, there’s a lot of “legend” mixed with the facts.

Southern States are just not equipped to handle cold. Georgia had a freeze one year during rush hour. Cars were stuck on the Interstate and people had to walk to safety. It costs too much to keep all the equipment and stuff for ice. We just shut down when we hear ice or snow is coming. We had a storm a few years ago and we had no power for a week. Thank God we had a fireplace. Snow is something we don't want!!

I didn't have any power outages for that storm and considered myself lucky about that. Unfortunately on Wednesday it heated up above single digits for a few hours and then my damn pipe burst in the laundry room because the pipes were in the ceiling next to the breezeway to the garage and it froze up but defrosted for a while, causing the copper pipe to burst. So for the rest of the week we had power but no water. It sucked. Plus rather than hot weather I'm used to after a natural disaster like a hurricane, we had freezing weather. It was miserable.

I live a few miles from the pile up on I-35. We never lost power or water but our heat pump on our air conditioning system froze so it no longer provided heat and our water froze in every pipe except for our master bathroom. My family is lucky because we drive out to a well in Canton, TX every few months and fill a truck bed's amount of water into self reliance water jugs so we had a months worth of water in our garage. We also go out and cut down trees at friends houses or we grab tree branches from roadsides after storms so we had about 1.5 cords of wood. We were warm and we had water. Our pipes never busted because we left the taps open on all faucets. I never knew doing this would be useful but i thank God that we had been doing this before the freeze.

There were two basic ideas that set up the dominoes. An independent grid encapsulated within the state to avoid federal regulations (which leads to the nation's cheapest electricity on average) the lack of oversight powers by ERCoT. The first domino was the freezing of natural gas pipes that feed into gas power plants. While Natural gas does not freeze at these temperatures, water within these pipes did in areas where there were high concentrations of moisture. This choked of access to severely needed electricity. The second issue was aces to wind electricity. Contrary to the official statement from the office of the Governor of Texas, the wind turbines did not freeze (save for an occasional few), but could not transmit that power to the major urban centers that demand that power. Most wind generation comes from the South Texas Coast and the high plains of West Texas. The issue is transmission lines required to transmit this power to the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex would cost in the tens of billions and require the use of eminent domain to take property away from property owners to build this electric corridor. Both of these ideas (outside regulation and surrendering ones own property to the government) are not issues the majority of this state's population would back. The rest is as was reported in the video.

Watching from Galveston Island Texas. Thanks for covering this. It was unbelievable.

Ahhhh, the year of snovid (snow + covid) We were without power for 17 hours. My family's savibg grace was that fuzzy blankets are my love language 🤣 The worst part was that I have medication that had to be refrigerated

I felt bad for everyone in Texas. Living all over I have just learned a variety of preparedness options for different weather and cold without power is one of the toughest situations and they had no experience in what to do.

I live in a town outside of Lubbock and while yes, in summer we can get temps up to 114 or so but in the winter we can get snow, icy rains, icy roads, and temps below zero. All 254 counties here in Texas were affected by this. My little town gave out free water. Then ridiculousI just layered so many clothes and used heavy quilts. I had plenty of food so I wasn’t worried about that and there was no place I needed to be that I had to get out on the roads.

Should have a look at Canada ice storm of 1998

I lived through this storm in Dallas-Fort Worth area. It started alone in my 1 bedroom apartment with my dog and cat. The snow in my area had come a few days before and seemed normal enough for the few times my area gets snow over the years. I remember waking up at nearly 5:30 in the morning to see my breath in front of me and my cat curled to my side. I was kennel training my dog at the time and she was sleeping in her kennel at night. I don’t watch the news and am not on social medias, so I wasn’t aware the of the power outages. I immediately went to my thermostat (which mind you, was the oldest thing I’ve ever seen) and couldn’t get it to turn on the heat. I realized all my power was out and immediately got my dog out of her crate and brought her to huddle for warmth in my bed. I tried boiling water for a bath, but the biggest pot I had made so little it was still freezing cold. Then the water was shut off. I couldn’t flush my toilet (funny enough had been using before I was aware and had to fix that issue later). Luckily I’m a naturally cold person and had an insane amount of blankets in my house. But we could only make it in there for about 12 hours before I had to call my family for help. My sister lived in a medical district and had never lost power, I traveled to her house pretty soon in, and the roads were not quite as bad yet. I can say I was lucky, things ran generally smoothly at her house, we had a good time almost like an extended sleep over. While there, maybe a day or two in, the fire alarm suddenly went off and we had to evacuate with all our pets. Turns out a neighbor below us had their pipes burst and was flooding down the stairs. After the situation was under control we were able to go back inside. But that water solidified on the stairs over the next few days making that whole staircase pretty much unusable for the rest of the storm. I got notification my power was restored and I had went back to my apartment. They dropped water off at the curb in gallons most unfiltered, undrinkable water for things like flushing the toilet (bingo problem solved). Then a few were drinking water. But due to repairs of all the burst pipes, my cold water was off for 5 days (which was got turned on a day after my return), and my hot water was off for 10. I eventually had to go back to my sisters apartment to take showers. It was horrendous and I could only imagine those in my complex who had nowhere to go and had to stay and survive in that.

I live in Houston and I was home for that winter ice storm. I had no electricity or water for 4 days. Every surrounding state hotels were completely booked. In Houston my apartment was averaging about 20 degrees and everything was completely shutdown. But I’m born and raised in northern Michigan and used to freezing temperatures, plus with my job I work in even colder temperatures such as the negatives which is very normal for my job. I wasn’t really affected by the cold, but just bored because everything was closed.

Thank you for reacting to this 🙏🏾. I live in Houston and was without power and water for 4 days during the freeze. It was about 20 degrees in my apartment but the great thing about Houstonians is we band together through crazy situations. The infrastructure is still outdated. The majority of the city was without power for days after the hurricane hit earlier this month.

We lost power for 54 hours. We do have a wood burning fireplace, so we were able to hang blankets and block off a smaller area of our house which kept us warm. The bigger issue was the water. Once we were told we had to boil water, that was just awful. We had enough food, and there were some things we could easily warm on the fireplace, but not being able to boil water was a nightmare. After a few days of no power, things in our freezer and refrigerator were compromised- meaning we had to throw out some things-but we ate like kings once we had to prepare our thawed meats. We got off lucky all in all. I discovered I’m good at roughing it…for 24 hours…then I’m OVER IT and will happily take those 100+ degree days…with ac and a swimming pool that is!

I'm in the Dallas, Fort Worth area and for whatever reason, my house didn't lose power through the whole thing. For me, the event wasn't anything of note, I just didn't go anywhere due to the cold. It was definitely very cold, probably the coldest I'd experienced here since moving here in 1989. Electric de-regulation was probably a huge mistake. It was supposed foster competition (cheaper electricity) but all it's done was make electricity more expensive and the grid more fragile. Necessities like electric, and water should definitely be things that are non-profit and highly regulated instead of for profit and loosely regulated.

I live in North Texas and was recovering from cancer surgery I just had the week before. One of our pipes in our utility room burst and flooded that room and the kitchen. I was in no shape to do very much and my husband had to do it all, plus take care of me. We ended up having to shut off the water. We relied on bottled water (luckily we had plenty thanks to stockpiling a lot during my 5 months of chemo). We were also lucky we never lost power like a lot of people did. Our block is on the same grid as the fire station down the street. If you were lucky enough to have a fire station or hospital nearby, you probably didn't lose power. Our furnance runs on natural gas so we had heat the entire time. We could also cook on our gas cooktop. I don't know what we would have done if we had no electricity or a more severe pipe burst. Over 700 people died as a result of the storm and the grid failure, but I don't know if the State of Texas has ever put out a number that really reflects how much people suffered. (One man, a flower vendor, froze to death in the room he rented in Dallas. His story just haunts me.) The storm uncovered how the power companies invest as little as possible into the grid/power stations (it would cut into profits to upgrade power stations and lines for storms that might only happen once every 50 to 100 years by old style conventional thinking. These are not coventional times.). Companies should not get away with doing as little as possible because it hurts the bottom line, profits, and shareholder interests. It's not right because people end up paying the price in the end. That needs to change or else we will see more of this. We are already did with the Centerpoint failure with Hurricane Beryl in Houston just this mornth (July 2024).

Without power north of Houston due to hurricane Beryl. The power company is saying they hope to have 50% of homes with power by Wednesday night. That is 60 hours or so after a minor hurricane. Nothing has been improved!

New Braunfels, Texas here! We are South Central Texas and it was a lovely time in the snow. We never lost power but we had no water for 9 days! We have a four wheel drive truck and had large containers that we filled up. It was quite an adventure! I wouldn’t mind it happening again! I know I’m a very different perspective than big city Texas!

My neighbors had to burn a bed mattress to stay warm I found out. We helped them and other kids as much as we could during this time.

I remember being stuck at home, wearing 4 layers of clothing, bundled with my dog in my sleeping bag, under blankets, fire in the fireplace, and it was still under 40 degrees Fahrenheit in my living room. This video forgets to mention that with the power out, the internet was out too. So the only way to get updates was via smartphones. But everyone was doing it so service was overloaded. It was loading slower that dial-up used to. We had an old battery powered radio that we turned on and left on. Cooking food in the fireplace in a cast iron skillet. Storing all our perishables OUTSIDE in the snow to keep them frozen. I knew enough to fill my bathtub with water before the storm hit, so I at least had drinking water.

My husband and I are from the Northeast. Most houses heat with oil for this reason. When the storms hit, we had barely moved into our new manufactured home so even we weren't really prepared. Fortunately for us, the power company is a private co-op and was not with Ercot. So we only lost our power for eight hours. My husband was checking the temperature of the water and just before the power came on, I was going out to the RV to get the antifreeze for the S-pipes and toilets. *We* were fortunate. Not too many other people were.

I live in Austin, was of course here during "snowvid" the week from hell. We lost power and had no water. Filled all containers including trash cans in our home full with snow to melt for flushing toilets. Had snow to melt for drinking water when the power would occasionally come on for brief moments. We had heard the weather was going to get bad, so we did set aside some drinking water, but had no idea how unprepared the utility company was and that we would be without for so long. Texas doesn't have snow plows and the snow was thick. Plus the roads were icy. All generators had sold out in Austin and surrounding areas. It was so cold and primitive feeling. Even once the power came back, stores took a couple of weeks to have even the most basic items back in stock. Austin is a decent size city too, this has never happened here. We have since purchased a generator, but plan to drip faucets and leave town if/when this type of forecast happens again. During the following spring, everyone was urged to put out dishes of sugar water for the bees and hummingbirds because so many plants/flowers didn't survive.

I live in North east Texas and definitely remember this. We didn't have it super bad like some cities did but we got the most snow I've ever seen in my life time and the lowest temperatures ever.Just about all stores closed except emergency services and I had to work being an ekg tech at the hospital. It was crazy. Got tons of pictures..ill never forget it.

I'm so bewildered and frustrated by the fire department's response to the wellness check request for that family. "It doesn't look like anyone's home" - yeah, because they're all DYING. I don't know if breaking into the house 3 hours earlier would have saved the mom and the daughter, but maybe it would have. I don't know if any emergency responders can help me out here, but I found that story especially heartbreaking because it seems like it could have potentially been less tragic.

I'm watching this as we move into day 5 of no power from Hurricane Beryl. Fallen tree unfortunately took landed on my generator. But spared the house. During Winter Storm Yuri, we were without power for almost 5 days, I think. The days kinda blurred together. I had my wife and our son stay at her parents property across the street since they have propane heat, and I stayed at our property. I can handle both extreme temps, especially since I built a fire in our backyard and cook various meals. Because we live in a rural area of Montgomery County, we have well and septic system. The video and images really don't do justice to what we experienced.

Dallas here…..I lost so much mature landscaping during this freeze….some things 25+ years old. The unusual thing about this freeze was that it got below freezing and stayed there. Typically in Texas, it will get cold enough to sleet or snow overnight, then warm up just enough to melt it during the day. But this event stayed way below freezing and our infrastructure is not built for that. I saw it coming and put in for time off from work, so was able to drip my faucets and avoid a broken pipe disaster.

We live in Austin, the Capitol of Texas, and we were here in during the big freeze. We were very lucky to be living in a newer house with great insulation and a natural gas fireplace and stove. We also have a large spa/hot tub holding several hundred gallons of water. We had multiple gasoline generators that refused to start at 7 degrees Fahrenheit. With the vented fireplace and Partly vented stove we never got super cold inside. To use the toilet I had to carry 5 gallon buckets of water from the hot tub outside through the length of the house. I also own quite a few battery powered tools so I had several lanterns and flashlights so we always had light and a charge for our phones. Phones didn’t matter much though. We lost internet and cell signal as soon as the power went out. After two days the electricity and phone signal would come back once or twice a day for a few minutes. The signal was very weak and slow but it allowed us to text our children who were at their university. They were very lucky and had intermittent power the entire time. They lost their water on day three but had some warning and filled their tubs which got them through the next two days. Now we have a very expensive home backup generator powered by natural gas. We have multiple electric heaters and a pump to move water from the hot tub to the toilets. I doubt that the state is really prepared if something like this happens again. The Republican Party, which controls the state, is heavily funded and aligned with the oil and gas industry. This is not conducive, IMO, to effective regulation of industries that don’t really want to spend their money preparing for disasters that may never happen.

We got lucky, and only lost power for about an hour or so. We were without running water for 2 or 3 days, but we had water stocked up, so we were okay. We got 6" of snow here, and we normally only get snow about once a decade. Temperature dropped to -6 F (about -21 C), whereas normally the lowest temperature we get during winter is just below 20 F (about -6.6 C).

Didn’t shower for 4 days, slept under like 4 blankets, we played games, and read a lot. Fortunately for my family and I our house has a gas stove so we could still cook and leave use the flames to light candles and so many other things

Just East of Dallas here. Worked at a hospital in Tyler. Went in and stayed there for 3 days. Took me 4 hours to drive 50 miles home from work when I finally left. Slept there, and it was COLD, even inside. The roads were so bad that we couldn't discharge patients to home for 3 days.

I was without power for 4 days. But it cycled off and on for a while. It would be on for about 10 minutes, then off for several hours. We had food, but the greatest battle was staying warm. We had a gas fireplace but it only kept the room we were in slightly warm. The rest of the house dropped to below freezing. Keeping the water pipes from freezing was also a big deal for many. We knew the forecast showed warmer temps coming but not soon enough. We were going to have to ride it out for a minimum of 4 days.

All I have to say about this is thank the lord that I never throw blankets away. My family just layered on about twenty blankets each and shivered. We had no power and even with the blankets we couldn't warm up. My daughter has a blackout isolation tent on her bed and it actually was about 20 degrees warmer in her bed tent than in the house. My little dog road out the storm with her.

One sad story not mentioned is some people that relied on oxygen machines passed they were unable to make it to hospitals and when the power went out their machines stopped working.

I am a native 5th generation Texan and this was something I never expected in Texas. I live in Austin and it is really a big deal when we dip below 20 degrees. During this period, we were just above zero F... and in the low teens for days. We were fortunate that we never lost power because we were on the same grid as a hospital, but we lost water as the city's water system shut down. I never ever ever thought that I would be shoveling snow off of my driveway.

“Texas Snowmageddon” we were lucky. We lived with family at the time. My dad’s house had a gas fireplace and stove so we could still cook and huddle by the fire. When we had no water we had to melt snow. But my husband’s parents still had water on and off so we trecked over there for the last bit of it.

I am so blessed that my house did not lose power during that winter storm. I live in the Dallas area. We had a house full of people and animals because friends and family stayed at our house due to none of them having power. Almost everyone I know lost power and water during that storm. It was bad.

I had been through 2 weeks of flooding and no power in freezing temps after hurricane sandy. But TX 2021 was something else. TX 2021 wasn't single digits it was NEGATIVE 7 in my area. No power for a week and no WATER! We cooked on the grill outside (in the garage with the door open) in negative temps. We boiled snow in the fireplace. We had to do toilet bags. We had to ask the neighbors for wood. We huddled by the fireplace in our living room with 22' ceilings which had no heat retention. And even if you could get out there was nothing to buy. Home depot had cut all wood of every size and sold it. The roads were inpassible and trucks stacked up miles long outside the state. There was no water to buy and we nearly ran out. Even once it started to thaw after a week the frozen pipes burst. It was a 6 week wait for plumbers working 20 hour days. Ercot and their solar and wind initiatives were fully to blame. The articles said we were 4 seconds from a catastrophic failure so they HAD to turn us off to prevent repairs that could take months. We had to beg our friends returning from FL to bring us food and water. It was a total nightmare!!!! You don't realize how fragile it all is until it all fails. I am now learning to prep.

This was by far the worst storm i can remember in tx. We lost water day 3 or 4 into. We were still going into work through most of this. We worked retail at the time sooo yeah that was bs. We never lost power luckily but at that time i lived across the street from a sub station. Without power we would have lost most of our pets for sure. I remember being at work when the wreck on 35 happened, so many customers of mine who were nurses just rushing to it or the hospitals. The whole area of dfw just felt off and dystopian. Then when it got warmer all the pipes busting in homes and mains busting the roads complicated things as it would freeze overnight.

Houston, Texas here. We aren’t prepared for this, in the sane way (as I understand it) UK is not prepared for excessive heat. Everything about Texas is built to withstand our native climate which is tropical heat. We just came out of a Hurricane yesterday and have heat warnings today. What do we have for that? Cooling Centers. We don’t have snow tires or coats made for below 0 weather. In most cases you can’t even find them in stores. We are heat, not cold. And this video is leaving out the fact that they turned off the power. Only left it for businesses and office buildings, and we had no water. I woke up to find my daughter and her cat ice cold. I thought they were dead. They weren’t moving. I was thinking I;m going to go with them. They finally moved and I wrapped them up and covered their heads and shared my body heat. After that we went to find food. Only Jimmy John’s was open and fed us. Insult to injury…they made it so we cannot sue them.

We were living in Frisco (northern DFW) at the time and remember this like it was yesterday. The blackouts would last well over an hour and the power would come back for MAYBE 15 minutes. We lived on the third floor of an apartment building and had our 1 year old bundled up. It was freezing in the apartment and everything was pitch black except some random businesses and stop lights. Fire trucks were parked at some of the main intersections waiting to respond if they needed to. Thank God my father in law lived near a hospital and had power. What was normally a half hour drive took nearly 2 hours and we stayed there comfortably for 4 days until everything had been restored. It was INSANE. I’ll just add that Texans don’t really have or need heavy winter coats because for the most part our winters are mild/moderate with freezing temps not lasting for more than a week at a time. Also, many homes here don’t have fireplaces so there wasn’t a way for our household in particular to stay warm. It truly was a state of emergency.

Love your content , great reactions. Unfortunately, we lived through it. We live in the DFW metroplex and when the power went out, it lasted 12 hours. We, luckily, have a SIL, who had kerosene stoves and lanterns (we also have a fireplace and had wood to last a few days). Our pantry was stocked prior to the shutdown and had running water. The rolling blackouts lasted about four days. Yes, we have COLD weather, even snow and ice during winter months. They say if you live in Texas and don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes. Continued success with your channel!!!

I live in Austin, and in my neighborhood it’s all electric meaning we do not have any gas powered anything. So when our power went out we had nothing to keep us warm (except blankets and candles). Luckily, our friends lived a few blocks from us and we walked to their house with an ice chest full of food. They had a gas stove and furnace. We could cook and get a warm shower at the least. We couldn’t even drive out of our driveway because underneath the foot of snow there was 3 inches of ice. I still can’t believe we ( my family and I) made it through this event. I am definitely more prepared, if this kind of storm happens again. We are stocked with propane, camping stove, and fire wood and winter shoes. Which we didn’t have any of those things during the storm.

My husband and I have been in Tx for almost 20 years. We BOTH come from snowy climates on the east coast and are used to these conditions. We didn't leave the house.

I had surgery during this. We drove 6 hours in the ice and snow and waited 2 days for the surgery center to get the all clear that no pipes had burst and they had stable power before putting me out for a 5 hour surgery.

I work ER & I worked during that time. A lot of elderly called 911 emergency to seek warmth coming to the hospital. It was sad a lot of people ended up sick. Other people died.

We nicknamed it the ice-pocalypse, I’m a nurse in a hospital and our hospital was full of patients that just needed oxygen because there was no electricity. So yes it really felt like an apocalypse of ice