Colder than a witch’s tit out there.

[seano732]

Hey, look at it this way. It took a whole month for the January thaw to arrive late.

Speaking of Texas, the now former mayor of Colorado City, TX weighs in.......WOW:

https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/n...ected-by-cold/

[Benny Profane]

You know, except for some stories I have heard about Austin, I could give a fuck about anywhere else in Texas. It's like God distilled the worst of the worst of the Scots Irish and let it settle there. And then they found oil.

[ötzi]

Vnzclrtho used to live in Salem I think and so did advres. Somebody else too, way back when. The Salem contingent has left the building apparently. Maybe on their brooms.

[dannynoonan]

Speaking of Texas, the now former mayor of Colorado City, TX weighs in.......WOW:

https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/n...ected-by-cold/

I mean..... It is texas..... That's kind of the foundational ideology there. Fuck you I got mine. This is precisely how I'd expect an elected official to act, in this day n age

[Meadow Skipper]

Speaking of Texas, the now former mayor of Colorado City, TX weighs in.......WOW:

https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/n...ected-by-cold/

Awesome.

[BmillsSkier]

I hear its gotten so bad in Texas that they've taken to shooting at the snow because no one can find shovels anywhere.

[BmillsSkier]

Booner?

[KQ]

Speaking of Texas, the now former mayor of Colorado City, TX weighs in.......WOW:

https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/n...ected-by-cold/

How do you t take that out of context? Send pretty damn clear to me - he's an arse.

Re Texans - Come on you guys. There is good and bad everywhere. I've got friends and family there that are great people.

[char_]

Speaking of Texas, the now former mayor of Colorado City, TX weighs in.......WOW:

https://www.bigcountryhomepage.com/n...ected-by-cold/

Wasn’t the governor of Texas making noise about succession not to long ago?

[seano732]

Wasn’t the governor of Texas making noise about succession not to long ago?

That would be the Chair of the Texas GOP......And hey, I’ve partied hard in Austin, San Antonio, and El Paso, but seriously fuck that guy.

[seano732]

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02...s-power-storm/

[dannynoonan]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tex...ower-grid/amp/

Why does Texas have its own electric grid?

Texas' secessionist inclinations have at least one modern outlet: the electric grid. There are three grids in the Lower 48 states: the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection — and Texas.

The Texas grid is called ERCOT, and it is run by an agency of the same name — the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. ERCOT does not actually cover all of Texas. El Paso is on another grid, as is the upper Panhandle and a chunk of East Texas. This presumably has to do with the history of various utilities' service territories and the remoteness of the non-ERCOT locations (for example the Panhandle is closer to Kansas than to Dallas, notes Kenneth Starcher of the Alternative Energy Institute in Canyon), but Texplainer is still figuring out the particulars on this.

The Texas Tribune thanks its sponsors. Become one .

The separation of the Texas grid from the rest of the country has its origins in the evolution of electric utilities early last century. In the decades after Thomas Edison turned on the country's first power plant in Manhattan in 1882, small generating plants sprouted across Texas, bringing electric light to cities. Later, particularly during the first world war, utilities began to link themselves together. These ties, and the accompanying transmission network, grew further during the second world war, when several Texas utilities joined together to form the Texas Interconnected System, which allowed them to link to the big dams along Texas rivers and also send extra electricity to support the ramped-up factories aiding the war effort.

The Texas Interconnected System — which for a long time was actually operated by two discrete entities, one for northern Texas and one for southern Texas — had another priority: staying out of the reach of federal regulators. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules. "Freedom from federal regulation was a cherished goal — more so because Texas had no regulation until the 1970s," writes Richard D. Cudahy in a 1995 article, "The Second Battle of the Alamo: The Midnight Connection." (Self-reliance was also made easier in Texas, especially in the early days, because the state has substantial coal, natural gas and oil resources of its own to fuel power plants.)

ERCOT was formed in 1970, in the wake of a major blackout in the Northeast in November 1965, and it was tasked with managing grid reliability in accordance with national standards. The agency assumed additional responsibilities following electric deregulation in Texas a decade ago. The ERCOT grid remains beyond the jurisdiction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which succeeded the Federal Power Commission and regulates interstate electric transmission.

Historically, the Texas grid's independence has been violated a few times. Once was during World War II, when special provisions were made to link Texas to other grids, according to Cudahy. Another episode occurred in 1976 after a Texas utility, for reasons relating to its own regulatory needs, deliberately flipped a switch and sent power to Oklahoma for a few hours. This event, known as the "Midnight Connection," set off a major legal battle that could have brought Texas under the jurisdiction of federal regulators, but it was ultimately resolved in favor of continued Texan independence.

Even today, ERCOT is also not completely isolated from other grids — as was evident when the state imported some power from Mexico during the rolling blackouts of 2011. ERCOT has three ties to Mexico and — as an outcome of the "Midnight Connection" battle — it also has two ties to the eastern U.S. grid, though they do not trigger federal regulation for ERCOT. All can move power commercially as well as be used in emergencies, according to ERCOT spokeswoman Dottie Roark. A possible sixth interconnection project, in Rusk County, is being studied, and another ambitious proposal, called Tres Amigas, would link the three big U.S. grids together in New Mexico, though Texas' top utility regulator has shown little enthusiasm for participating.

Bottom line: Texas has its own grid to avoid dealing with the feds.

[ötzi]

How'd that work out for them?

[dannynoonan]

Socialism sucks!!!!!

[BmillsSkier]

I’m so proud of you guys.

[My Pet Powder Goat]

Did someone say tits?

Sent from my SM-N986U using TGR Forums mobile app

[bennymac]

Good site for checking temp extremes

[ntblanks]

Did someone say tits?

Sent from my SM-N986U using TGR Forums mobile app

now i can't not see them

[BmillsSkier]

I can tell things are getting bad here. The HVAC in the office has been getting louder and louder to the point where I've now got my internet radio cranked to hear it over the freight train hum and there are no less than 4 large HVAC service trucks parked in the lot down below.

[char_]

I read somewhere that they had something similar happen in 1989 and 2011 in Texas and winterization of their system was recommended both times and not implemented.

[ötzi]

Ain't no damn pencil pushin regultors gonna tell them fellers what to do.

[plugboots]

I read somewhere that they had something similar happen in 1989 and 2011 in Texas and winterization of their system was recommended both times and not implemented.

Yup. There's a lot of "once-in-a-lifetime" event chatter, but it's basically every 10 years or so they get a cold snap, and their shit doesn't work. I imagine this will get either more frequent or more severe as climate change progresses. The Gulf is getting warmer, so, ya know, hot air rises, and will pull in cold air from the North.
It was only a few months ago when Cruz, that one-eyed asshole, Cronyn, and prolly some other TX assholes were saying liberal policies caused California's blackouts. Now Abbott and whoever are saying the same shit about windmills and the green new deal, when it mostly seems to be a failure of the natural gas system, and their desire to not join the National grid.
Fuck them. Although I feel Biden did the right thing with the emergency request. I wish there could be a caveat with the granting.

[TBS]

Ms TBS just sent me this.
Warning - this makes fun of right-wing Texan survivalists

so my eldest brother, who is a moron, has been playing soldier with his moron friends in the deserts of texas for the last year preparing for the collapse of civilization if biden won (lol). they were burying food and ammo stashes out in the desert, running drills, crazy stuff

this included getting a cb license so he could be their lifeline to other groups of white idiots when the cell towers all went offline. wouldn't want to violate federal law while communicating with your resistance groups after the fall of the federal government i guess.

anyways, you would assume given that they've been prepping for the end of the world for at least a year they're well situated to ride out the rolling blackouts right?

their plan for cooking and heating during an extended power outage was natural gas, but like a lot of homes their gas service is out. the food in their freezer and fridge is already toast due to the power outrages, so they're down to canned stuff, but there's a catch.

they can get into the pull top cans just fine, but the ones that require an opener? their only can opener is electric. so a good 3/4 of his canned food store is inaccessible to him unless he goes after it with a knife, which i sincerely hope he does.

so captain survival was eating unheated ravioli out of a can yesterday because i guess he doesn't know how to start a fire? they have a fire pit but it too is gas fired. he told my mom they're probably going to break into the survival buckets soon. i'm sure that's great food.

he told my mom that the blackout is due to texas switching everything to "wind power" but that he didn't discount that the government was doing this on purpose. if you can figure out why they'd arbitrarily freeze out a giant state hey points to you.

the saving grace in all this is he's having to ration his phone usage so he can't sit on the phone with my mom for hours crying about it. he's forced to sit there and talk to his wife, who is almost as dumb as he is.

he's tried contacting his best friend in his little larping group, but he's gone to ground. i sincerely hope that means he thinks this is the start of the great purge or whatever and he's disappeared to the mountains to evade FEMA and child support bailiffs

i'm trying to get more details from my mom but i have to play it cool. if i laugh she'll stop telling me about it, so i have to pretend this is very serious and i'm concerned for his safety while i'm imagining him hitting a can of baked beans with a screwdriver repeatedly

on the plus side they've got plenty of guns and ammo, so they can shoot the shit out of the snow.

just to give you all some additional comfort: his wife is part of the group who helps select the textbooks texas buys every year, just in case you're wondering about the kind of people that make those decisions.

https://twitter.com/torriangray/stat...78280521605122

[seano732]

Ms TBS just sent me this.
Warning - this makes fun of right-wing Texan survivalists



https://twitter.com/torriangray/stat...78280521605122

That is awesome....

[Meadow Skipper]

That is awesome....

+1