{"id":69678,"date":"2026-01-21T11:39:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T17:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/?p=69678"},"modified":"2026-01-21T11:39:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T17:39:06","slug":"ready-for-another-deep-freeze-austin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/?p=69678","title":{"rendered":"Ready For Another Deep Freeze, Austin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret that central Texas doesn’t handle snow and ice nearly as well as cities in northern climes. Snowpocalypse<\/a> and Arborgeddon<\/a> shut everything here down hard.<\/p>\n

According to the National Weather Service, another freezing storm is due in on Saturday<\/a>. The high during the day looks to be 34\u00b0F, with a 90% chance of precipitation, and the low that night is currently forecast as 18\u00b0F. That’s a recipe for icy roads, possible power loss, and the entire city shutting down.<\/p>\n

The good news is that you have two days to prepare for it. Wednesday is a good day to lay in supplies, as you can expect the usual shortages of bread and milk on Friday. You might want to lay in extra ready-to-eat items (crackers, beef jerky, etc.) in case of power loss if you don’t already have any on hand. <\/p>\n

Paul Martin has a cold weather checklist<\/a> that’s more geared toward his setup, but at a minimum you want to:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Lay in food supplies.\n
  2. Lay in some matches and candles if you might need them.\n
  3. Ditto firewood if you have a functioning fireplace.\n
  4. Get refills for any necessary meds you’re low on.\n
  5. Gas up your car.\n
  6. Have some cash on hand, just in case credit card machines and\/or ATMs are down. (With so many cyber outages in recent years, this is just good advice in general.)\n
  7. Start making extra ice cubes to preserve refrigerated or frozen foods if power outages extend past the thaw.\n
  8. Put covers on your exterior faucets.\n
  9. Get your plants and pets inside.\n
  10. If you have the time and tools, trim any tree limbs over your roof. During Arborgeddon, these gathered ice and snapped.\n
  11. Power up any rechargeable batteries or devices, including power stations, flashlights and phones.\n
  12. Get fuel if you have portable heating devices (and keep safety and carbon monoxide in mind if using those indoors).\n
  13. If you have one, gas up and\/or recharge your chainsaw.\n
  14. If you have a refrigerator with a water dispenser\/ice maker on an exterior wall, drain and shut the water line to that if possible. Lots of people don’t think about that when prepping for cold weather.\n
  15. If you have any regular weekend chores, you might want to do them ahead of schedule on Friday, especially if they require power (i.e., washing clothes or dishes).\n
  16. When the freeze hits, open sink cabinets so warm air circulates on less insulated pipes on your outer walls.\n<\/ol>\n

    Paul Martin’s after action report on the 2021 storm<\/a> is also useful. <\/p>\n

    With two plus days to go, those of you with Amazon Prime can order a lot of stuff and have it at your home before he freeze hits. Here are some specific prep items for cold weather:<\/p>\n

  17. Faucet Covers<\/a><\/b>. That link goes to the black padded version, but these plastic ones<\/a> are bigger if you need that.\n
  18. O’Keeffe’s Working Hands cream<\/a><\/b>: I walk my dogs 2-3 times a day pretty much every single day of the year, and I found my hands getting cracked and raw in the cold, even through gloves. O’Keeffe’s Working Hands fixed the problem. I frequently give this stuff out as Christmas gifts.\n
  19. Carmex lip balm<\/a><\/b>. A small, cheap jar that solves the chapped lips problem in winter.\n
  20. Kerasal Intensive Foot Repair<\/b><\/a> for cracked and painful feet. Podiatrist recommended! Full review here<\/a>. For more foot pain relief, you can also use Eucerin Intensive Repair Foot Creme<\/a><\/b>, which is a bit cheaper per ounce.\n
  21. De-icing spray<\/a><\/b>. You can stand there for 15 minutes ineffectually scraping your frozen windows like William H. Macy in Fargo<\/strong>, or you can keep a bottle of this in your trunk.\n
  22. Gas And Water Emergency Shut Off Tool<\/a><\/b>. The Orbit 26097 provides a water shutoff valve, a gas shutoff valve, manhole cover lift tool, and a rubberized grip. If a pipe bursts during the cold, you’ll need one of these to shut the water off.\n
  23. Sawyer Products Water Filtration System<\/a><\/b>: At least one of Austin’s previous ice storms featured a water department failure and resulting boil notice, and the Sawyer system is Good Enough to get you through such events, even if it is a slight pain to fill and squeeze the bag enough times for my dogs and I to drink (but still less of a pain that boiling water and waiting for it to cool).\n
  24. Snow Melt<\/a><\/b>: If you have concrete sidewalks, pathways or driveways, this stuff gets good reviews and is supposedly more pet friendly than straight road salt.\n<\/li>\n

    Here are some specific items to prepare for blackouts:<\/p>\n

  25. Everyone needs flashlights<\/b>. This Goreit flashlight<\/a> seems bright, cheap, and gets pretty good reviews. The highest rated flashlight on Amazon is the Streamlight 75458 Stinger DS<\/a>, which is fairly pricey. I assume it’s brighter and with a longer life, and maybe you have a use case that justifies the cost. And if you have flashlights, chances are you’ll also need…\n
  26. Batteries<\/b>. D-Cells<\/a> are still used in a lot of things, and you’re going to want, at a minimum, enough to reload every flashlight twice, which should get you through a couple of evenings of power outages. Check your flashlights every six months. This is one of those items that you might very well find cheaper at Sam’s.\n
  27. 12 pack LED Tea Lights<\/a><\/b>. This is a strange one. These mimic flickering candlelight, and I bought them for Halloween decorations, for which they worked well enough. I think they’re just bright enough and cheap enough for a few use cases around the house in an extended power outage. You can probably (just barely) read with them by holding them right next to the page, but I think they would be most useful for providing acceptable light in places like bathrooms, at the top and bottom of dark stairways, on dining tables, etc.\n<\/li>\n

    Here’s the Austin energy outage map<\/a>, just in case. You might want to have that bookmarked on your phone. <\/p>\n

    Remember that you can recharge your phone and other USB electronic devices from your car outlet if you have to. <\/p>\n

    Hopefully ERCOT is better prepared<\/a> this time around…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It’s no secret that central Texas doesn’t handle snow and ice nearly as well as cities in northern climes. Snowpocalypse and Arborgeddon shut everything here down hard. According to the National Weather Service, another freezing storm is due in on Saturday. The high during the day looks to be 34\u00b0F, with a 90% chance of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":291,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2859,7326,2195,2747,1456,1137],"class_list":["post-69678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-ercot","tag-ice-storm","tag-paul-martin","tag-prepper","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69678"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69696,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69678\/revisions\/69696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battleswarmblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}