Winter storm brings deadly mess to Texas
Six killed in Fort Worth pileup, with snow possible in Houston next week
By next week, Houstonians may not recognize their city, as an Arctic front is expected to bring a stretch of below-freezing temperatures and wintry precipitation to the metro area, setting the stage for widespread travel disruptions, frozen pipes and record-setting electricity demand.
North of Houston, icy weather has already caused havoc. At least six people were killed and dozens injured Thursday in a massive crash involving more than 130 vehicles on Interstate 35 near downtown Fort Worth, police said, as a winter storm dropped freezing rain, sleet and snow.
Temperatures are expected to plunge through early next week in Southeast Texas. From Friday to Tuesday, the high temperatures will hover between the low 40s and high
teens — colder than the average low temperatures for this region in mid-February, according to the National Weather Service Houston/Galveston.
Houston-area residents should expect temperatures in the low- to mid-40s through Saturday with scattered showers. Saturday night temperatures will likely hover just above freezing for Houston, while areas farther north could see the first of several freezes in the coming stretch, according to Space City Weath
“The roadway was so treacherous from the ice that several of the first responders were falling on the scene.”
Matt Zavadsky, spokesman for MedStar
er.
The National Weather Service forecast shows temperatures dropping to a low of 29 degrees Sunday night with a 60 percent chance of a wintry mix. The coldest weather is expected around Monday, when temperatures could plummet as low as 16 degrees with a high chance of either snow, freezing rain or sleet.
In Houston, officials are urging residents to stay indoors if possible or bundle up in multiple layers if it’s necessary to go outside. People should also bring pets indoors, disconnect outdoor hoses, wrap exposed faucets and pipes, bring potted plants indoors and practice heater safety.
Space City Weather forecaster Eric Berger said he is “reasonably confident that areas north of Interstate 10 will be cold enough on Monday, during the day time, to see some sort of wintry precipitation.”
He said it is likely the region will see a hard freeze into Tuesday morning, endangering exterior pipes, vegetation and outdoor pets. Low temperatures throughout the day could range from 10 degrees to freezing.
After that, the cold is expected to linger. A “prolonged stretch of below-freezing and potentially historically low temperatures will last well into next week,” the NWS said. Another round of precipitation may arrive by midweek, forecasters say.
The prolonged frigid weather could bring winter electricity demand to an all-time high. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the flow of power to more than 26 million Texas customers, has asked generators to prepare their facilities for the extreme cold, including reviewing fuel supplies and planned outages.
Based on the forecast, ERCOT said, the state could set a record for winter demand Monday morning. The current record is 65,915 megawatts set from 7 to 8 a.m. on Jan. 17, 2018.
Meanwhile, icy conditions have swept across other portions of the state. In the Fort Worth pileup that killed six, a tangle of semitrailers, cars and trucks had crashed into each other and had turned every which way, with some vehicles on top of others.
At least 65 people were treated at hospitals, with 36 of them taken by ambulance from the crash site, including three with critical injuries, said Matt Zavadsky, spokesman for MedStar, which provides the ambulance service for the area.
Numerous others were treated at the scene and released, he said.
“The vehicles are just mangled,” Zavadsky said. “Multiple tow trucks are on scene. It’s going to take a lot to disentangle this wreck.”
Police set up a reunification center for family members at a community center.
“The roadway was so treacherous from the ice that several of the first responders were falling on the scene,” Zavadsky said.
Farther south, in suburban Austin, more than two dozen vehicles were involved in a pileup on an icy highway, and five people were taken to a hospital, emergency officials said.
The storm came as a polar vortex — swirling air that normally sits over the Earth’s poles — has moved near the U.S.-Canada border, resulting in colder weather farther south than usual, said Steve Goss, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
“As a result, we’re getting unusually or unseasonably cold air that’s spilling south across a good portion of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains,” he said.