Right now Texas is on a collision
course with a blast of Arctic air today.
From state government down to the local
level, people are getting prepared.
David Paul leads off our team
coverage tonight with the timing
of this big Arctic blast.
David's wind chill warning,
freeze warning in effect now
for Central and South Texas.
That's all the pink area and then
other temperature related warnings
encompass the entire state of Texas.
None of these have anything
to do with snow or ice.
There will be none of that in Texas,
just very, very cold air.
This also extends all the way up.
Across the central and northern plains,
where temperatures drop some 30-40
degrees in just a matter of an hour,
setting some records for the fastest
temperature drop in spots across
Montana and Wyoming this afternoon.
These are Blizzard warnings
across the north and Great Lakes.
And then these are all the freeze warnings.
And this is very interesting.
You rarely see temperatures that
are going to drop this quickly this
dramatically across Southeast Texas.
Here's the forecast for noon tomorrow.
We're basking at 60 degrees,
but you can see looming toward
College Station,
the leading edge of the Arctic air.
Which will race across the area in the
early afternoon and by 7:00 o'clock have
almost all inland areas below freezing.
Don't underestimate how cold it's gonna
get and how quick that's gonna happen.
Tomorrow afternoon.
Plan accordingly,
dress accordingly and we'll go over
everything with the wind forecast,
the wind chill forecast and the weekend
forecast for Christmas in just a little
bit. You have to take it seriously.
Thank you so much, Dave.
Tomorrow at 3:00 PM for warming,
centers will open that include the
George R Brown Convention Center,
Moody Community Center,
Fondy Community Center.
And acres home,
a multi service center.
These warming centers will stay
open until Saturday at noon.
Other centers and nonprofit organizations
are also opening up their doors to
help people get out of the cold.
Out of it is live at one warming center that
opened in North Houston just minutes ago.
Adam, how are things going there?
Well, we are still waiting
for people to come in, Mia,
but things are set up and ready to go.
You can see behind me some of the 500 cots,
blankets and pillows that volunteers
here at Greenhouse International
Church on West Greens Rd have put out.
And we already saw a few people
waiting outside even a couple hours
before the doors opened here.
So the pastor here says there is
a lot of need in this community
in AC disaster services.
They're the nonprofit running this operation.
This will stay open until at
least noon on Friday, I'm told.
But of course. That can be extended
if the weather conditions.
Allow for it the church.
This church again can hold up to 500 people,
but the pastor told me they
can expand if they need to.
Well, I received a phone call a couple of
days ago actually would be a warming site.
And without hesitation, I mean to say yes,
because the last winter freeze
I had a couple of funerals.
One was a. Couple senior citizens,
they died and went to freeze,
so I couldn't say no to open
up a warming center.
And the pastor told me if
there is a power outage,
the church does have backup generators.
He also told me that anybody staying
here in the warming center will
get three meals per day and the
shelter will be for people only.
It's important to note that they do not,
unfortunately,
have the resources to care for pets,
but they tell me they are
looking for volunteers and they
say if you want to help out,
all you need to do is show up,
run and Mia.
A lot of people will be volunteering.
Alright, thank you so much, Adam Bennett.
Right now, ERCOT says the state
power grid is ready and reliable.
This is the first winter time test of the
grid since the deadly freeze of last year.
The Arctic Front moves in tomorrow
afternoon and ERCOT expects the
demand to peak Friday morning.
The Public Utilities Commission
says they have more reserves,
so they will tap into that before they
have to ask people to conserve power.
Officials say there could
be isolated power outages,
but it doesn't mean the grid is down.
We will have high winds that could
bring down branches and even if
there are some localized power
outages due to falling branches,
that does not mean that Arcot or the state
does not have sufficient generation.
Since the 2021 freeze,
upgrades been made to generators,
poles, wires and infrastructure.
Right now, more than 200 plants
have undergone winter inspections,
with more plan through the winter. Fort
Bend County is home to the
largest power plant in Texas.
It's owned by NRG, and crews are
busy preparing for the Arctic blast.
Jeremy Rogalski is live with more on
the winterizing going on there, Jeremy.
Yeah, around the WA parish plant
here is a workhorse capable of
generating electricity to feed
nearly 5% of the entire ERCOT grid,
and NRG Energy tells me it has
spent millions on winter readiness.
I think we're in really good shape
at Energies flagship power plant.
Winter preps kicked into
full gear about 10 days ago,
started going over everything,
double checking it, checking it twice
with four coal-fired units and
another set of gas fire generators.
There are a lot of moving parts,
so you can see everything's insulated
since the historic winter storm and
RG is upgraded insulation and updated
heat tracing of critical components.
And unlike before,
everything is now fully automated.
I can be sitting at home.
You know two in the morning on
Christmas and if I want to make sure
that the heat trace panels are on,
I can I can check the heat trace panels
for the record. General manager
Daryl Miller will be here on
Christmas working a 15 hour day.
We're headed down to one
of our wind barricades.
Winterization efforts here range from
the high tech down to the simple too.
You get a 30 or 40 mile an hour wind.
This isn't going anywhere,
so we know this is going to be protected.
You'll find plenty of plywood box
barriers around along with portable
heaters and wrapping of pipes.
Just like you would do at home
if things start to freeze.
Other bad things will follow
in this report from ERCOT.
3/4 of parish plant units were
producing only limited power
during the epic February Storm
heading into this Arctic blast.
Is that in the back of your mind at all?
What it did is it gave us
a lot of lessons learned.
We've made a lot of improvements,
and we have that list.
We talk about it, we document it,
and then we use that to
improve for the next year.
A big challenge here and elsewhere is
the age of power plants. Consider this.
Parts of this facility were built
back when Eisenhower was president.
The GM here tells me that's like
keeping a 60 year old Chevy Roadworthy.
Takes a lot of time,
maintenance and effort to do so. Ron's
keeping that old Chevy in operation.
All right. Thank you so much.
Jeremy rogowski.