In Boerne, the temperature didn't get above freezing for a whole week...

1983 Freeze

I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

Parts of Lake LBJ froze over. Pipes all over Austin, mainly in the apartment complexes burst simultaneously. I don't recall ever losing power like this however.

I am sure due to the power outages the burst piping scenario is going to be apocalyptical in a day or so. A true plumber's paradise.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

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Didn't have a de-regulated electric grid with a large percentage of the generating capacity being solar and wind.

That's back when we used lignite coal and not unicorn farts. Those days are gone forever, especially once Texas turns blue.

Under NO circumstances should a week of 10-20 degree temperatures cause Texas to devolve into a third world country.

This is unacceptable, and heads should roll for it.

For this area, we've surpassed the time below freezing compared to 1983. That's what the local news said.

That year and 1989 killed a bunch of trees as well, we will see what this one will do.

83 was a "dry" cold, no comparison.

Cassius said:

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That's back when we used lignite coal and not unicorn farts.

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Exactly. Back then real close to 0% of the grid was powered by "unreliables" aka "renewables".

I remember White Rock Lake freezing over, and people I've skating on it. We never lost power. I don't remember as many problems.

Pooh-ah95_ESL said:

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Parts of Lake LBJ froze over. Pipes all over Austin, mainly in the apartment complexes burst simultaneously. I don't recall ever losing power like this however.

I am sure due to the power outages the burst piping scenario is going to be apocalyptical in a day or so. A true plumber's paradise.

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I remember one really cold Christmas when I lived in the Houston area. That might have been 1983.

What I found odd was so many people leaving for Christmas and coming back to find their pipes burst and soaking the house. I never did understand why anyone would put their pipes in the ceilings.

I went out to my deer lease during the 83 freeze. Got to the property and the guy and his son who kept up the cattle for the land owner were "watering" the cows by pouring water from buckets into a trough. They were filling from a huge tank on a trailer. He explained that all the water lines were frozen but there was a place in town people were getting water. After watching them for a few minutes as we talked, I asked why they didn't just connect a water hose to the faucet on the bottom of the tank and not deal with the buckets, lol. I have never hunted in such extreme cold and the deer must have hibernated as I didn't even see a doe.

What was the population of Texas back then, and would an increase impact the energy needs required simultaneously put added pressure on the grid as a whole?

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

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back in 1983, there were no cell phones, no
Internet, no TexAgs message boards or Twitter or Facebook. It was a lot damn harder back then to even know somebody was being hysterical about something, unless it was the neighbor next door.

Today, thanks to technology, you can now feel totally connected to millions of other people's emotions, opinions, and criticisms on anything and everything, 24-7 if you so choose.

Isn't that great?

I had just built a house and moved in that summer. Lost every bit of my landscaping.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

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The population was about half what it is today in 1983.

More people + social media = more bellyaching

I wasn't alive, but I've heard legends of the winter of '83 from several people.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

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Didn't have 20% of our capacity in worthless ****ing wind and solar. Also, didn't have deregulation.

torrid said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

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Didn't have a de-regulated electric grid with a large percentage of the generating capacity being solar and wind.

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Just curious. How much "solar" capacity is there in Texas? As for wind, I've learned from texags that it is 20%. WAY TOO MUCH in my opinion. Wind energy is unreliable and should only be considered a supplemental source. The frozen wind towers proved that - both in Texas and OK.

And please spare me the "gas was unreliable too". It CAN and SHOULD be reliable, but it appears it was FUBAR in this situation due to piss poor planning and preparation by Texas electric power generators and regulators.

Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

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The population was half as much. But yes was almost as cold and lasted longer. However less snow. Mostly composed of an oscillating dry polar airmass that did'nt have an upper storm track out of the Eastern Pacific. This event does. Thus the snow and ice going all the way back into West Texas.

'83 was just days of low overcast and extremely light snow with little accumulation.

Did it impact opening weekend of Return of the Jedi? No? Then it never happened.

From the Chronicle article...

It began when a pool of Arctic air pushed over the Texas coast the afternoon of Dec. 21, plunging air temperature from the 50s to the 30s in little more than an hour. In Houston, the temperature dropped below freezing the next afternoon and remained there for five days, setting a record for longest period of below-freezing temperatures in the city. Houston's temperature fell below freezing for 10 consecutive nights, bottoming out at 13 degrees on Christmas morning.

It was equally frigid on the coast - 15 degrees in Palacios, 14 degrees in Galveston and Corpus Christi, 19 degrees in McAllen. Air temperature remained below freezing for 77 hours in Port Arthur. Saltwater froze; on Trinity Bay, a sheet of ice 4 inches thick extended almost 500 yards from shore, and a similarly thick layer created a 100-yard band around the edges of the Upper Laguna Madre.

NormanAg said:

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torrid said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

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Didn't have a de-regulated electric grid with a large percentage of the generating capacity being solar and wind.

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Just curious. How much "solar" capacity is there in Texas? As for wind, I've learned from texags that it is 20%. WAY TOO MUCH in my opinion. Wind energy is unreliable and should only be considered a supplemental source. The frozen wind towers proved that - both in Texas and OK.

And please spare me the "gas was unreliable too". It CAN and SHOULD be reliable, but it appears it was FUBAR in this situation due to piss poor planning and preparation by Texas electric power generators and regulators.

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I can certainly understand gas wells freezing up.

We used to have wellhead gas at the farm. In the wintertime, it froze up at the wellhead all the time. It could normally take hours for a employee of the gas company to come out and thaw it out. Fortunately, my uncle worked for the gas company and would come out and thaw it out much quicker. And then my oldest brother went to work for them and would go thaw it out.

I guess they could run electrical lines to each well, but then you would have to worry about a potential for an electrical spark and a gas leak to result in a spectacular fireball that would cost a fortune to put out and would destroy the well in the process.

Quote:

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Mostly composed of an isolating dry polar airmass that did'nt have an upper storm track out of the Eastern Pacific. This event does. Thus the snow and ice going all the way back into West Texas.

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I swear, sounds like a former NWS intern who might have worked at the Lubbock Weather Forecast Office.

Great post! Very well stated. And FWIW, I was the AF Weather Detachment Commander at Cannon AFB, Clovis NM in 1983 and we had pipes freeze in base housing during that cold outbreak. And the "snow and ice" actually went "all the way back into Eastern NM". I remember it well.

BassCowboy33 said:

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I wasn't alive, but I've heard legends of the winter of '83 from several people.

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It was epic. I was a weather freak then. And Tech had its masters of meteorology program on the top floors of the BA building. The program director Dr. Peterson was a super cool dude that let Business students hangout- I had interned with the NWS out of Midland wanting to be a weather dude until I saw the pay to work ratio. Then went business.

This guy was all over the '83 event. A day before a real and rare "Blue Northerner" blew across the Panhandle, Peterson noted extreme barometric pressure readings over Western Montana. Told me Kid get home fast this is historic and dangerous!!

That was the last day of finals in mid Dec 1983. Didn't see above freezing temps for 13 days. Highs in Odessa were in the teens lows of 8 to 10.

Broken water lines and house flooding wrecked Austin and Dallas. BTW this is the next big problem the people of Texas will have to deal with. Its coming. When it goes above freezing pray your water lines have not cracked due to freezing. If they have get the water OFF.

NormanAg said:

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Quote:

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Mostly composed of an isolating dry polar airmass that did'nt have an upper storm track out of the Eastern Pacific. This event does. Thus the snow and ice going all the way back into West Texas.

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I swear, sounds like a former NWS intern who might have worked at the Lubbock Weather Forecast Office.

Great post! Very well stated. And FWIW, I was the AF Weather Detachment Commander at Cannon AFB, Clovis NM in 1983 and we had pipes freeze in base housing during that cold outbreak. And the "snow and ice" actually went "all the way back into Eastern NM". I remember it well.

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Ha close MAF. Glad to see you on this thread. Weather war stories from us old timers.

Pumpkinhead said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

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back in 1983, there were no cell phones, no
Internet, no TexAgs message boards or Twitter or Facebook. It was a lot damn harder back then to even know somebody was being hysterical about something, unless it was the neighbor next door.

Today, thanks to technology, you can now feel totally connected to millions of other people's emotions, opinions, and criticisms on anything and everything, 24-7 if you so choose.

Isn't that great?

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POTD

ttu_85 said:

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BassCowboy33 said:

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I wasn't alive, but I've heard legends of the winter of '83 from several people.

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It was epic. I was a weather freak then. And Tech had its masters of meteorology program on the top floors of the BA building. The program director Dr. Peterson was a super cool dude that let Business students hangout- I had interned with the NWS out of Midland wanting to be a weather dude until I saw the pay to work ratio. Then went business.

This guy was all over the '83 event. A day before a real and rare "Blue Northerner" blew across the Panhandle, Peterson noted extreme barometric pressure readings over Western Montana. Told me Kid get home fast this is historic and dangerous!!

That was the last day of finals in mid Dec 1983. Didn't see above freezing temps for 13 days. Highs in Odessa were in the teens lows of 8 to 10.

Broken water lines and house flooding wrecked Austin and Dallas. BTW this is the next big problem the people of Texas will have to deal with. Its coming. When it goes above freezing pray your water lines have not cracked due to freezing. If they have get the water OFF.

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Yep. This x 1000.

If you faucets are running without leaks now, you should be OK if you continue to keep them dripping/running. But those that are frozen now ... big breaks will be ahead across the state.

'83 was very cold in a much bigger area of the country. I lived in coastal NJ and the high temps remained near zero and lows in the -10 range...I remember seeing a weather map where Dallas was showing 5F and even then (before met school) I knew that was not normal for any part of Texas.

Pumpkinhead said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

---

back in 1983, there were no cell phones, no
Internet, no TexAgs message boards or Twitter or Facebook. It was a lot damn harder back then to even know somebody was being hysterical about something, unless it was the neighbor next door.

Today, thanks to technology, you can now feel totally connected to millions of other people's emotions, opinions, and criticisms on anything and everything, 24-7 if you so choose.

Isn't that great?

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Depends on the quality of the "other people's emotions, opinions, and criticisms on anything and everything" So I'd say its not so great.

Oh and there was the internet. our AFOS computer was connected but no pron, FB, and that stuff.

I was 7 when the 83 freeze hit. I remember being shocked that bar ditches froze solid so that you could slide across the ice in them, and my parents had a pipe burst in a wall and had to shut off the water and rip out drywall until they found and fixed it. The 89 storm had much more ice. My dad got trapped at home from work for a couple days due to iced streets. I remember the talk about the huge fish kills in the bays too.

Science Denier said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

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Didn't have 20% of our capacity in worthless ****ing wind and solar. Also, didn't have deregulation.

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Also, it was dry. No rain, sleet or snow. Sunny the whole time.

ttu_85 said:

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Stat Monitor Repairman said:

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I don't remember it being this much hysteria.

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The population was half as much. But yes was almost as cold and lasted longer. However less snow. Mostly composed of an isolating dry polar airmass that did'nt have an upper storm track out of the Eastern Pacific. This event does. Thus the snow and ice going all the way back into West Texas.

'83 was just days of low overcast and extremely light snow with little accumulation.

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Depends on where you were. In the Wichita Falls area, we had several inches of sleet with the temperature right around freezing before the real cold air came in. I had declined to go on a ski trip, and ended up spending the entire week chopping ice so the cattle could have something to drink (took us the better part of the day to get around the entire place).

YouBet said:

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Did it impact opening weekend of Return of the Jedi? No? Then it never happened.

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The Ewoks wore fur coats. duh.