Massive Texas power outage

[Subdood]

Was just visiting the weather channel and saw that over 1 million customers without power in the Houston area from severe thunderstorms, most of those (+800K ) are in Harris county alone, comes out to about 40% of customers are without power.

The storms are moving into extreme SE Texas, and Louisiana, so expecting more outages there.

I don't think I've seen so many outages in such a short time, outside of a hurricane. Most of the damage seems to be from +70mph straight line winds. There was also a unconfirmed tornado. Widespread damage obviously, even some skyscrapers had windows blown out.

Makes me wonder if my array could handle such winds. But, we have had 60mph winds, and my ground mount seemed to handle it okay.

Any SE Texas forum members want to report in? Maybe @EastTexCowboy?

 

[Q-Dog]

We are on the edge of it. Lots of thunder and lightning and heavy rain. Grid still up so far but the UPSs are beeping. Our batteries are charged so we are ready. It seems we get it every few days for the past month ... lost a tree and some shingles and lost the grid for 36 hours during one about 3 weeks ago.

 

[Subdood]

lost the grid for 36 hours during one about 3 weeks ago.

How did y'all fare during that outage? Did you have enough battery/solar to get thru it?

I think we could have 2 days without the grid with our present setup. But we'd need some sun on that 3rd day to recharge the batts. We've had lots of rain this month, but it's usually scattered enough to get enough sun to top off the bank during the day.

 

[Q-Dog]

How did y'all fare during that outage? Did you have enough battery/solar to get thru it?

I think we could have 2 days without the grid with our present setup. But we'd need some sun on that 3rd day to recharge the batts. We've had lots of rain this month, but it's usually scattered enough to get enough sun to top off the bank during the day.

We had sun both days during the outage and didn't need lots air conditioning so we were fine. I loaned our gasoline generator to a neighbor because we didn't need it.

 

[OffGridForGood]

Wow, hope all you down in the that area are ok.

 

[Q-Dog]

Grid went down for us about an hour ago. The poco outage map isn't working for me at the moment so can't tell how extensive this is. I can see the neighbors across the street waving flashlights around inside their house, and I hear at least one generator running somewhere out there. We have lights on and the local news stations to tell us how bad the weather is.

We still have some wind and lightning and thunder but the rain has slowed significantly for now.

 

[rhino]

http://poweroutage.us is a good source as well.

 

[#40Fan]

From a post on another site.

 

[wpns]

Wow! That’s not getting fixed overnight!

 

[meetyg]

From a post on another site.

Wow!
I guess it'll take quite some time to fix those.
I hope you all are OK, meantime...

 

[740GLE]

From a post on another site.

That’s gonna take a hot minute to get back up in the air.

My biggest fear is multiple lines in one ROW all getting cleaned out like that.

 

[Subdood]

I don't think straight line winds took those out like that, unless it was 100mph+ winds, looks like a tornado knocked those over.

Still 800K without power in TX, 700K in Harris county, plus 170K in LA.

 

[OffGridForGood]

800K without -Utility-power in TX

joking asside, hope everyone is ok, and they get the utility back up soon.
Maybe we will see a flurry of new DIY Solar memebers sign up in the months afterwards.

 

[ChrisG]

That’s an incredible amount of damage to those transmission lines. I lived in Houston area (Cypress TX) years ago and everything was built to sustain hurricane force winds. Truly hope everyone is ok there.

Weather has been crazy all over. We have a cabin at a high elevation in the NC mountains and just had two tornados in a single storm, F1 and F2. First time in recorded history in that area.

 

[Q-Dog]

Woke up to the hum of our neighbors' generators all around us. Grid still down here in Louisiana plus our internet/phone went down during the night. Cell phones have intermittent connection. Rain started up again this morning and no new damage that I can see at my place now that we have daylight.

Our batteries are at 69% as I write this and we couldn't be more pleased with our backup power. I haven't heard if there were any tornados around us, or just straight-line winds. I hope everyone is safe out there.

 

[Subdood]

Sorry that everything thing is down, but it must be reassuring that y'all have power. I imagine lots of folks who live on the Gulf Coast would be prepared in some way for situations like this.

 

[houseofancients]

Hope everyone is well and keeps safe !

 

[Bluedog225]

It got a little sporty. Fortunately, the ground mounts held.

 

[DPC]

y'all

In no way diminishing the gravity of the storms....
I hope everyone is fine.

American English makes up new words you hear but often don't see..
I have heard people on TV say " Y'all " but I don't think I ever have seen it typed out .

Cool...
It rolls off the tong nice and its a two letter word!
Ял...
I'm going to through that into an email to a relative and see how she reacts too it.
That Y'all in Cyrillic text...

Its a nice contraction of the word and you would be surprised how many borrow words work their way into non English speakers daily lives.
Like Hi or stop...
Here's what a Ukrainian stop sign says...


literally just stop...


Next time you fumble with spelling, and I do it all the time think about borrow words.
How many are actually foreign words we have adopted a long with our version of their spelling...
Sorry for being off topic

 

[Sanwizard]

It got a little sporty. Fortunately, the ground mounts held.

View attachment 215956

Wow. Those are bridge supports, not ground mounts! You should be fine my friend.

 

[Subdood]

In no way diminishing the gravity of the storms....
I hope everyone is fine.

American English makes up new words you hear but often don't see..
I have heard people on TV say " Y'all " but I don't think I ever have seen it typed out .

Cool...
It rolls off the tong nice and its a two letter word!
Ял...
I'm going to through that into an email to a relative and see how she reacts too it.
That Y'all in Cyrillic text...

Its a nice contraction of the word and you would be surprised how many borrow words work their way into non English speakers daily lives.
Like Hi or stop...
Here's what a Ukrainian stop sign says...
View attachment 215962

literally just stop...


Next time you fumble with spelling, and I do it all the time think about borrow words.
How many are actually foreign words we have adopted a long with our version of their spelling...
Sorry for being off topic

I guess it's a southern thing. In a related note, my wife, who is from Kentucky uses that term, it's "y'uns", as you-uns. I'm from OK, so I've never heard of it until she mentioned it, so I had to ask her what are you talking about??

American English can have many different regional dialects and vocabularies. I've learned lots of new words since we moved here in the Appalachian Foothills.

Yeah, I imagine that stop sign would translate into gibberish in literal Ukrainian (or Russian).

I study languages as a hobby, and I find it all very interesting. I have a basic knowledge of German, French and Spanish. Meaning, I can read it a lot better than speak it. Most Europeans learn several languages in school, I wish that was emphasized here. I took two years of Latin and a year of French in high school, but I hardly remember any Latin, as there wasn't a real reason to. But I still remember quite a bit of French.

 

[DPC]

I had a teacher from Germany in high school.
He saw me struggled with English spelling ( I am Canadian born here learned English from birth and it is my mother tong I just struggled a lot ).
A long with learning to play chess with him he use Latin to pick apart words and explain to me how they bolted the letters together.
He also introduced me to different spellings using archaic Latin letters we don't use in modern English but are used in German or Polish and their variants in other related languages with borrow words....
It was complicated but I began to understand the spelling with some of his tricks.
I still struggle and I flip letters and numbers but I'm much better...

I think this is from Us declaration of independents?

Congress spelled with archaic long S ( also still used in German in a mmore modern type set )
My name has two "SS" in it and he told me in its old spelling it would have used a long S

OK way off topic and now I am hijacking so sorry about that OP...

 

[Subdood]

I had a teacher from Germany in high school.
He saw me struggled with English spelling ( I am Canadian born here learned English from birth and it is my mother tong I just struggled a lot ).
A long with learning to play chess with him he use Latin to pick apart words and explain to me how they bolted the letters together.
He also introduced me to different spellings using archaic Latin letters we don't use in modern English but are used in German or Polish and their variants in other related languages with borrow words....
It was complicated but I began to understand the spelling with some of his tricks.
I still struggle and I flip letters and numbers but I'm much better...

I think this is from Us declaration of independents?
View attachment 215972
Congress spelled with archaic long S ( also still used in German in a mmore modern type set )
My name has two "SS" in it and he told me in its old spelling it would have used a long S

OK way off topic and now I am hijacking so sorry about that OP...

It's my thread, so I don't care about derailments.

Yeah, that F in those old documents can confuse us modern folks. I think German was considered as the official language of the new United States, but English won out. But I could be mistaken.

A double S in German usually gets transcribed as an "ß", whereas one S is "s". For example if you wanted to call someone a "poop head" in German, you would say, or spell, "Scheißkopf"..

I got interested in German because my grandmother was 100% German and would often scold me and my sister when we were kids in her native language. That was over 50 years ago, and I didn't remember what she said, but she might've ignited my interest in languages.

 

[DPC]

Ya I can read that lol
Rolls off the old tong nice.
Germans make a lot of interesting compounded words that work their way back into English like Doppelganger.

The head part of this has the ---Long L and its generally silent but indicates a long O or A after the letter---
( same expression but I never heard anyone say shite head in polish before, they usually go for the genitalia when swearing. I am particularly fond of " son of a Kurwa lol"... )
( thank you Mr Google translator for help with the characters in the following sentence... )
A fecal matter headed human...
Ludzka Gówniana Głowa

That's another oddity in English
With a few exceptions we like to for the stuff that comes out of or is related to the back side of barn animals after we are done with F word..
Other people like to go straight your ancestry and insult your mom ect.

Swearing is magic lol
Its good for you reduces blood pressure.

 

[Sanwizard]

It's my thread, so I don't care about derailments.

Yeah, that F in those old documents can confuse us modern folks. I think German was considered as the official language of the new United States, but English won out. But I could be mistaken.

A double S in German usually gets transcribed as an "ß", whereas one S is "s". For example if you wanted to call someone a "poop head" in German, you would say, or spell, "Scheißkopf"..

I got interested in German because my grandmother was 100% German and would often scold me and my sister when we were kids in her native language. That was over 50 years ago, and I didn't remember what she said, but she might've ignited my interest in languages.

Uh, nope. We were a British colony back in the day. Read the history of Jamestown, Charleston, and "New England". Many Germans immigrated here back in the day, which is the reason there are so many Amish Menonites.

France owned much of the midwest near New Orleans. Jefferson bought it from them, but its the reason they have a french dialect(same with Eastern Canada. Western Canada is mostly British, but becoming very Asian now).

I am half German, as my dad immigrated here as a child before WW2. My Grandma scolded me in a similar manner as yours. My grandpa was VERY strict. He told stories of WW1 where German soldiers would bath in frozen streams. He said " Unt Zeez were MEN!

As for the power outage in Texas, my sister in law lives in Houston by China Town. They have power as of an hour ago.