Austin usually has hot, dry summers with a high pressure system parked over us for months on end, but this year it’s been the worst since The Great Drought of 2011, where something like 98% of the state was in stage four drought conditions.
Thus far this year, the drought hasn’t been as bad (we had a decent amount of rain in spring), but the temperature has been more extreme, as this week saw a break from Austin suffering a record 45 days over 100°.
ERCOT continues to warn of the possibility of rolling blackouts to shed load, but thus far has kept up with demand this summer, despite warnings earlier this year.
Remember that favoring trendy green energy sources like solar and wind over natural gas was a big contributing factor to the 2021 ice storm blackouts. Hopefully Texas lawmakers have learned their lesson, and more reliable baseload power has come online since.
As always, it’s best to be prepared with flashlights, batteries and maybe a portable power source to power fans and medical devices. (That’s the one that gets the best reviews on Amazon. I just got another power source, but since it came free as part of one of those “Redeem your company’s award points for merchandise from this catalog” type deals, I don’t have enough experience with it to recommend it yet.) You might also consider a home generator, like this one, but those are pricey, loud, and I have no direct experience with them, so you probably want to do some research if you’re going that route.
Stay cool…
Tags: Austin, blackout, drought, Energy Policy, ERCOT, prepper, Texas, weather
How does this year compare to the 1980 heat wave?
I was working outside in construction in SE OK that summer, and it was miserable; OKC had 28 straight days with the high over 100 deg. We were starting our days at 6:30 am, which was as early as local noise ordinances would allow, and knocking off at 2:30, which didn’t help much; it was 90 deg by 9am. I think DFW had about 50 consecutive days with temps over 100 that summer, and the two hottest days in DFW history – 113 F – were recorded the end of June 1980; I happened to be in north Dallas that weekend with friends and yeah, it was effin’ hot.
But I don’t know if it was that bad in Austin or not.
I drove from CA back to TX in late June, coming into TX from Roswell, NM and driving via Post to Abilene. It was quite hot then (IIRC, the car dashboard temp read something like 108 going through DFW) and I was amazed at how many of the wind turbines we saw weren’t turning.
This summer reminds me of 1980, too. I lived in Dallas then and it was just as bad as you recall. I came to visit Austin–my home town–several times that summer and while it wasn’t as bad as Dallas it was still well into the 100s all summer.
I haven’t compared the data, but this summer feels very similar.
Well, if any were voted out of office, then maybe. Otherwise, I’d bet against it.
Here in Austin, I’m just waiting for a fire to happen and the source be traced back to a nearby homeless encampment. It’s inevitable, but it’s also inevitable that the press will downplay the connection.
This already happened in 2010 during the Oak Hill fire in South Austin.
A homeless guy lit a fire and then left it to go get beer. 20 or so homes damaged or destroyed.
as far as climate change is concerned, man is like a fly stuck on the windshield of a 100 car coal train wondering if he’s slowed it down.
have a look at actual data. the vostok core provides nearly a half million year record of earth’s temperature and it shows an immutable cycle of high then low temps – entirely independent of SUVs.
https://www.serendipity.li/climate/images/Vostok-medium.jpeg
soon – in geologic terms or reference, inhabitants will be worrying over something much worse than global warming.
Back in the 80s, Isaac Asimov wrote that humanity had built our current numbers during a period of unusually stable climate, and that if the climate returned to its normal level of variability (normal according to the geological record), we would be in trouble. Perhaps what we are seeing right now is the climate returning to its normal level of variability.
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