Winter is Coming (Don't Act Surprised)
The winter of 2021.
We've had 1,000 flights at DFW canceled. Fair Park, the site of the annual State Fair, has been converted into an inclement weather shelter. Store shelves are empty, and neighborhood spigots are covered with styrofoam blocks.
I lived in the Midwest for a few years, so ice and snow don't freak me out the way they do some folks. Just drive slower, and stay home if you can. No, your four-wheel-drive doesn't matter much. No, two bags of cement mix on your pickup bed won't keep you from spinning into a ditch.
Officially, Texas had 246 deaths during the snowstorm of 2021. Unofficially, it was probably closer to 700, due to indirect causes like carbon monoxide poisoning and medical equipment failure.
Since then, we've made many technical improvements to our power plants (winterization, more generators, more batteries), but our structural limitations remain. We're still not connected to adjacent states, like the rest of the country. If there's too much demand, we're on our own.
That's dumb. Texas keeps treating winter like an unexpected guest instead of a regular visitor, and every time we act surprised, hundreds of people pay the price.