“I get that there’s a fine line between preparedness and panic, but I wish they’d been more aggressive in their communications,” Rizzolo said.įor many Texans, it was the second time in three years that a February freeze - temperatures were in the 30s Thursday with wind chills below freezing - caused prolonged outages and uncertainty over when the lights would come back on. Power failures have affected about 30% of customers in the city of nearly a million at any given time since Wednesday.īy Thursday night, Austin officials backtracked on early estimates that power would be fully restored by Friday evening, saying the extent of the damage was worse than originally calculated and that they could no longer predict when all the lights may come back on.Īllison Rizzolo, who lost power in Austin, told KEYE-TV that she wished there were more clarity from the city on what to do or expect. The failures were most widespread in Austin, where impatience was rising among 150,000 customers nearly two days after the electricity first went out, which for many also means no heat. “The fact that we’ve got COVID-19 which temporarily put a brake on emissions last year does not mean that the need for climate action is diminishing.Across Texas more than 280,000 customers were without power Thursday night, down from 430,000 earlier in the day, according to. “The fact that we had a relatively cold month does not negate climate change, it does not reverse the long-term trend in rising temperatures due to global warming, climate change”, she said. Nullis noted that average carbon dioxide concentrations in February were 416.75 parts per million, up from 413.4 parts per million in February 2020. The February 2021 power crisis in Texas left more than 4 million without electricity at its peak. Emissions keep risingĪccording to the latest data on carbon dioxide concentrations, greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise.Ĭiting the Mauna Loa station in Hawaii - a benchmark reference station – Ms. 2021 freeze event appears to have been larger than any other fish kill event seen since the. This fish kill consisted of at least 61 species. An estimated minimum of 3.8 million fish were killed on the Texas coast during the Feb. Moderate freeze: 25° to 28☏ (-3.9° to -2.2☌)widely destructive to most vegetation. The classification of freeze temperatures is based on their effect on plants: Light freeze: 29° to 32☏ (-1.7° to 0☌)tender plants are killed. This value represents the coldest monthly anomaly for almost six years, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Please take the publication date into consideration for any date references. A frost date is the average date of the last light freeze in spring or the first light freeze in fall. This once-in-a-generation four-day stretch of subfreezing temperatures that has gripped the Austin area will. Globally, February 2021 was close to the 1991-2020 average, but 0.26 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1981-2010 average. The Valentines Day weekend of 2021 is destined for the meteorological history books. We expect this trend to continue”, WMO said in a statement. “Cold records are becoming rarer, in contrast to heat temperature records and heatwaves. 1:34 Nate Chute Austin American-Statesman Despite having warmer than normal temperatures during La Niña winters for the third year in a row, Austin has once again been hit by freezing temperatures. The UN agency also cautioned that although February was a relatively cold month, this does not negate the long-term warming trend from climate change. Southwest Economy, Second Quarter 2021 Texas Winter Deep Freeze Broke Refining, Petrochemical Supply Chains Jesse Thompson It may take the Texas petrochemical industry until year-end 2021 to fully recover from the record cold that triggered power outages and supply disruptions in mid-February. due to the winter storm impacting the region. Cold records, ‘becoming rarer’įebruary temperatures were also well below the 1991-2020 average over much of the Russian Federation and North America, but they were well above average over parts of the Arctic, and from northwest Africa to southern Europe and China. METRO says all of its services will be suspended in Houston on Sunday, Feb. Nullis added that no less than 62 all-time daily cold minimum temperature records were broken in the United States from February 11-16, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 20, 2021, 5:14 PM PST By Nicole Acevedo President Joe Biden declared a major disaster for much of Texas as the state reels from a severe winter storm.
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