Episode CLXXVI: It Gets Cold, Texas Falls Apart
We've weathered some epic winter storms in the past. But the disaster we just experienced in Texas is easily the worst. Not because it was severe (it was very mild by Boston standards), but because the Texas power grid essentially planned to be unprepared for such a storm. It started innocently enough. An inch or two of snow. Frigid temperatures. The next day we woke up to a rare Texas winter wonderland. But by then we were beginning to experience scattered power outages, which just kept getting worse and worse over the next three days. Overnight temperatures crept as low as ~5 degrees Fahrenheit outside. And when you combine that with no electricity for heat, you wake up to a very cold house. We learned that our thermostat doesn't actually read anything lower than 54 degrees (why would it, right?) According to a mercury thermometer I brought home from work, our bedroom got as low as 45 degrees. And that's with a well-insulated house! My colleague who lives in a historic...