Winter storm called once in a generation'

An arctic storm that swept through the state bringing low temperatures and high winds also affected roughly two-thirds of the country’s population, according to the National Weather Service, bringing the coldest Christmas in decades to parts of the country.

The Dallas Morning News reported around 190 million people across the United States were under some type of winter weather advisory starting last Thursday.

“This is quite the arctic cold air outbreak,” said Hunter Reeves, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth. “This air has been bottled up in Canada and is letting loose, headed straight south.”

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages nearly all the state’s electric grid, reported Friday that grid conditions were adequate to handle current demand for power. ERCOT is providing a dashboard that monitors supply and demand across the state. Texas is coming up on the second anniversary of Winter Storm Uri, which resulted in power outages throughout much of the state and at least 137 deaths. The storm resulted in several measures to improve the grid’s reliability.

Temperatures in the latest arctic storm were in single digits Friday throughout much of the state.

COVID-19 cases rise slightly

The number of new COVID-19 cases in Texas during the past week rose slightly to 31,169, with 120 deaths reported by the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University. The number of lab-confirmed COVID-19 patient hospitalizations also rose slightly to 2,327, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Gary Borders is a veteran award-winning Texas journalist. He published a number of community newspapers in Texas during a 30-year span, including in Longview, Fort Stockton, Nacogdoches and Cedar Park. Email: gborders@texaspress.com.