Texans Brace for Historic Winter Storm—While Some Already Have Backup Plans in Place

Residents in parts of Texas and the northern Gulf Coast woke up Tuesday morning to frozen pipes amid a rare winter storm that is bringing dangerous snow and ice conditions—and threatening parts of the region with power outages that could last for days. 

An unprecedented blizzard warning is now in effect from the upper Texas coast to the coast of Louisiana, causing major highway closures and disrupting air travel, including in Houston. 

AccuWeather reported that portions of the western and northern Gulf Coast could see the biggest amounts of snow in more than a century. 

In Texas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio are expected to bear the brunt of the historic winter storm that is being driven by dry, arctic air. 

“This will be a rare and especially dangerous winter storm right along the upper Gulf Coast that will result in major and lengthy disruptions to travel,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter said.

Snow is expected to fall at a rate of 1 inch per hour or more from eastern Texas to the western Florida panhandle on Tuesday and into Wednesday, and historic snowfall totals between 3 and 6 inches are forecasted along the Interstate 10 corridor, including Houston and New Orleans. 

Areas just north of the I-10 corridor could see snow totals of up to 14 inches.

“Travel will be dangerous or impossible for hours to days after the storm along vast stretches of the I-10 corridor,” warned AccuWeather Meteorologist Brandon Buckingham.

Houston’s low temperature on Tuesday will be a bone-chilling 18 degrees, according to the National Weather Service, or low enough to cause pipes to burst. Much of southeast Texas will be under cold-weather advisory until 6 p.m.

Homeowners prepare for burst pipes, outages

Since temperatures are expected to plunge to their lowest mark before dawn on Wednesday, the weather service placed the Houston metro area under an extreme cold watch through 9 a.m.

Jonathan LeBron, plumbing manager at Nick’s Plumbing & Air Conditioning in the Houston area, told the Associated Press the company has been inundated with calls from homeowners fretting about frozen pipes.

“There is a little bit of panic,” LeBron said. “I think they’re pretty aware of what’s going on. The last freeze was three or four years ago. They want us to go out there and make sure things are insulated accordingly.”

Mike Dishberger, CEO and co-owner of Sandcastle Homes, a Houston-based homebuilder, told Realtor.com® that during construction, pipes that are installed inside exterior walls are insulated using inexpensive foam against the cold.

But older homes built before 2005 are at a higher risk of burst pipes when temperatures drop below 20 degrees.

“Homes built in the ’50s and ’60s do not have insulation in their homes, or they have older, galvanized pipes that become brittle,” Dishberger said. 

Over the past two decades, Dishberger said, “We’ve gotten way better at insulating things.”

Thousands of homes in and around Houston were without power on Tuesday, according to Houston Chronicle. But some households were better prepared than others for the storm, having invested in blackout protection in anticipation of just such an event. 

Dishberger said that in the wake of outages that impacted the area in the summer of 2024, a growing number of homebuyers have been installing solar panels and battery storage.

In the event of a power outage, a solar panel on a house continues to absorb energy from the sun, which is then stored in a battery and can be used to power appliances after dark.

“We have everything running on it,” Dishberger said of the solar panel system at his Houston home.

The solar panel continues to retain energy even when it’s cloudy outside, but not if it gets snowed in.

“They are being put on the more expensive houses,” Dishberger said of the solar panels. He added that a single panel with one battery, which is sufficient to power a smaller-sized home, can cost on average $40,000. Larger systems come with a price tag of about $70,000.

Another way to avoid sitting in the dark for days is to install a backup power battery system, like the kind the Austin-based electricity provider Base Power specializes in.

In case of an extreme weather event, the system automatically switches to battery power as soon as it detects grid outage, “keeping the home running with minimal interruption,” a Base Power representative told Realtor.com in an email.

A backup battery can power a home for more than three days if the energy usage is carefully managed.

Travel disruptions

Close to 2,000 flights within the U.S., or entering or leaving the country, were canceled Tuesday; and a further 10,000 flights experienced delays because of the winter storm, according to FlightAware.com.

In Texas, Houston’s two airports suspended flight operations starting Tuesday in expectation of dangerous conditions.

Before snow and sleet moved into the area overnight, Houston Mayor John Whitmire urged residents to wrap up their storm preparations and then stay off the roads.

“Get prepared to be in your house, in your residence, in your warming place for the next 48 hours,” he said noting that temperatures weren’t expected to get above freezing until Thursday. “So don’t let even clear skies on Wednesday and other days fool you. This is a serious arctic blast. It’s dangerous. It’s life threatening.”

Echoes of Texas’ 2021 deep freeze

Snowfall in Houston is not unheard of but is not a common occurrence. The last time the city experienced whiteout conditions was in February 2021, when Texas went into a deep freeze that wreaked havoc on its ill-equipped power grid and infrastructure, causing $195 billion in damages and making it the costliest natural disaster in the Lone Star State’s history.

The biggest snowstorm on record in what is now known as the I-10 corridor took place in February 1895, dumping up to 20 inches of snow along the Texas and Louisiana coasts, according to AccuWeather.