Yes, compared to where you live, this is a much newer neighborhood. Because there has been no ice on the sidewalks and streets, I have exercised outside every day, and I saw lots of tree damage today. I did not see any uprooted trees, but I saw lots of fallen limbs like in my front yard. Maybe some of them damaged roofs when they fell. I do not know.
I had no power problems this year; I did not hear from you today so I do not know if you did. I well remember the major days with no heat problem you had in ‘21.
Very different storms. 21 had snow & deep freeze - lots of plants with damage due to cold. This year was barely freezing, but the ice buildup is ripping trees apart. 21 stressed the grid due to both power demand and poor preparedness at generation source. This year it is all about ice and tree limbs interrupting service. No need to “conserve” or blame human error. I guess we could clear cut the trees, but that seems a little drastic.
Which is what I said near the beginning, and I was/am not arguing. We were talking about two different things. I was talking about personal inconvenience and discomfort to the point of danger: near-impassable roads and streets, treacherous sidewalks so iced-over walking even short distances became difficult to impossible, lack of electricity, heat, and/or water for days. Mark had to abandon his frigid house and stay with a friend. None of this happened to me this time, and I hope it did not happen to any of you. I have read about power outages in Austin so I know I have been lucky. My proximity to Dell Children’s is probably why.
I completely agree this one’s devastation on trees and plants is far worse this year. I have lost most of a fairly big tree in front of my porch, and I am worried about 2-3 others. The slight warmup today will not help those trees or the frozen plants much. Mark lives in NW Hills, and the many oak trees there are stately, old, and large. The devastation in his neighborhood must look like a war zone. The tree damage in Mueller is extensive but relatively minor by comparison.
Burying power lines - at least the “last mile” lines - would help. That way, a single shade tree can’t be taken down and blackout an entire neighborhood.
Burying power lines is more expensive than poles and builders love to save cost. Absent a change in code I don’t think aerial power lines are going anywhere. (Our neighborhood is only about 12 years old and the Round Rock tornado last year took out our neighborhood’s power for over a day.)
Clearly burying the lines is more expensive on the front end. But what’s the cost of people and businesses losing power for days on end, and having to go street by street every year or two to upright those poles?
I’m not sure the governor has much ability to do anything about trees icing over and knocking down power lines, and incidentally, trees falling in a storm is something I’d think twice about criticizing Abbott for in particular.
You’ll get no argument from me on that one, but builders don’t care about that. They pay to have the lines installed, but don’t have to pay to have them repaired.
Yeah, pointing fingers at Abbott/ERCOT or even the electrical providers is not a great take. Austin Energy could probably be handling communication better, but unless the solution is “no trees” I’m not sure what anyone could really do differently in this situation.
A friend of mine was given a gift for Christmas by his then girlfriend/now wife of a big screen TV. Along with the TV, she also gave him a payment book of 24 payments for the TV. She had made the first payment.
Builders installing power lines (and roads), is exactly like that.
And now the stupid TV weather people are pointing fingers at Austin Energy, claiming that they accurately predicted how much ice was going to be deposited and the city should have been out preemptively trimming branches. Yes, I’m sure that 12-hour head start would have given them plenty of time to identify, cut, and clear all of the problematic branches. I guess people just have to have something to bitch about.
It’s part of the job of government to be prepared for when emergencies happen. It’s also part of their job to make sure that regional utilities are prepared for when emergencies happen.
When emergencies happen, and it’s a clusterfuck, I think it’s ok to point fingers at those whose job it was to be prepared. Especially when every emergency is a clusterfuck.
Knowing that winter was coming (it does every year), maybe they should have already checked for overhanging branches that would threaten the power lines if they came down and, you know, trimmed them.
Bitching about this particular storm is ridiculous, but from an arborist perspective the only 2 times you want to trim live oak trees are when it’s really cold and when it’s really hot. It’s hard to predict the “really cold” part in Texas, but summers are pretty reliable and that’s a great time to get that done.
So sorry Austin got blasted by this. My part of the Hill Country did not, we just didn’t have the rainfall yall did (one of the few times I will ever be happy about not getting rain).
Get to go check the critters in a bit now that everything’s thawing out.
They already have a significant budget for “vegetation management” and they’re out there trimming stuff all year. Most of the branches causing trouble weren’t anywhere near the lines: they were up high, broke off, and fell on the lines. If you want to hear bitching, try telling Austin that you’re going to lop off every branch that’s in the vertical exclusion zone of any power line.
Yes, winter comes every year, but ice storms like this don’t. I’ve lived here for 44 years, and this is the worst ice accumulation I can remember. In the end, this is no different from a tornado or hurricane, and bitching about it as if it could have been prevented is equally insipid.
