No water. The Laguna Madre Water District currently has no power. Probably doesn't help that everyone in south Texas whose pipes haven't burst was trickling water. We are fortunate that we still have power - lots of areas all around us are also without power. Our house is all electric, so without power, nothin' works. Without water, nothin' flushes.
You know there has been a run on bottled water at the grocery stores. Well, Walmart is closed because they don't have power; HEB has power and it sounds like the crowds are Black Friday size. Joan mentioned that we have some bottled water in the motorhome... "We have bottled water in the motorhome?"
"Yes, and some soda, too."
We are now cleaning up - as best as we can without showers - so we can get out to the motorhome to see if the bottled water and soda have frozen and made a sticky mess of it. It is now 35º at home and the wind is down to 9mph, so only insultingly cold rather than brutally cold.
When we lived up north, our homes had fireplaces and wood burning stoves, so even without power we wouldn't freeze to death. Pipes were buried deep in the ground, so the chance that they would freeze was less than here, where they drag a stick along the ground and put a water line in it.
Yes, I am sorta kidding. This weather is unheard of in deep south Texas. Joan optimistically said, "I'd rather be without water than without power." I'll ask again in a couple days, when we haven't had showers. Kidding again - I'm not dumb enough to bring that up.
Time to run... off to our "escape pod" to see how it fared.
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Back. The important news: it was 39º in the motorhome and all was good. Leaving home, we had just over half a tank of gas in the car. It is 40 miles to the storage unit. The plan: I put a couple gas containers in the car; I'll top them off in case we need to run the generator.
Leaving town was eerie - no lights. No gas stations open. Power is obviously out in town... except for HEB (they must have a generator) - the parking lot was packed. With no water in much of the area, we planned to stop at the next town, where there is a McDonalds - get something for breakfast and have no dishes to clean. The lines at the drive-up at MickeyD's were a block long. Nope. Good news: there is a gas station next to McDonalds that is open. The bad news: they must be out of gas. We got in line but soon saw that there was nobody actually pumping gas. People were using the area by the gas pumps for parking while they shopped in the convenience store. It took some maneuvering, but we got out of there.
It isn't out of the way to at least check out the Walmart in that town... they had power and the gas pumps didn't have long lines! I filled the Honda and topped off two 2-gallon fuel containers. On to the storage unit. I unlocked the coach and turned on power; while Joan went inside to assess the situation, I put away the trouble light I had put underneath for warming, since there is no power here, either. Joan let me know all was good inside. Whew! I loaded the water and the few bottles of soda into the car. The outside air temp in the car read 31º at the storage unit. I was surprised that it wasn't at least that cold in the coach.
We considered driving through Harlingen on the way home to pick up a bite to eat. Joan checked the AEP (power company) web site for outages: looks like much of Harlingen has no power, either. We talked about swinging back through Los Fresnos and opted to just head for home.
Joan is convinced the power outages are due to "rolling blackouts" to protect the grid; I think some of this is due to damage caused by the weather. Driving back into Port Isabel, Walmart looks like a ghost-town, HEB is still packed. Using the water we took out of the coach, we don't have to go to the store right now.
Rolling onto our island, we have power. I am surprised - anything we get (water, power) has to come through Port Isabel to get to us. There were a few blocks towards the east end of town that had power again as we drove through. Another gas station/convenience store, with cars in line for gas about a block long.
Back at home, we have power and warmth. Good thing, since it is 34º here at 11:00am (predictions were for 40º at 10:00). I turned our water back on and we have a weak trickle of water. It's enough to fill a couple of waste baskets with water (taking a while) so we'll have water for flushing.
Since the actual weather is worse than today's forecast, I don't put much stock in the 55º high being predicted for today. For now, we're good. We'll use water sparingly. If the power goes out, we have gas for the generator. No reason for us to go back out again for a while... Rufus did go outside for a couple minutes when we first got home; that will hold him for a while. He is not a fan of the cold.
Here's a map that shows areas of outage from AEP...
The island we are on is just south of Port Isabel, and no outage markers there.
There are some dead fish in our canal and lots of smaller fish swimming near the surface. When we came back to our island, there were cars parked in the boat ramp area - people are walking along the north shore, rescuing cold shocked sea turtles. Hundreds of sea turtles have been taken to Sea Turtle Inc. on South Padre Island. Time in extended cold is going to take a toll on these cold blooded reptiles.
Thursday looks to be another cold front and overnight lows potentially below freezing. It has been a tough week all over the country. Schools have been closed here and Covid vaccinations have had to be postponed in some places. Our local Event Center in Port Isabel will be open tonight as a shelter for those without water and/or power.
Weren't we promised that 2021 was going to be a better year?
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