I saved a ton of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico....

Can we get back to the topic please?

How much money does the state spend on everything else? How much would it cost to subsidize at least the readiness of coal plants so that Texans don't die, spend untold billions of dollars on property damage (water damage, plumbing, fires, etc.) when we have extreme cold snaps? Would people be willing to spend a few extra dollars every month for emergency readiness after going through this catastrophic fiasco? How about if ERCOT said no, you're not shutting down Martin Creek and Welsh when we already have people dying because of a lack of power?

I know at least eight friends who have had pipes rupture, or whose pipes are frozen now and will probably shoot water everywhere when they thaw. Then entire city of Whitehouse is without water. Tyler, with 100,000 residents, is under a boil water notice because the water treatment plant at Lake Palestine went down. A major hospital had extensive flooding from busted pipes that they couldn't keep warm. Why did all that happen?

Because the state has a shortage of electricity and power was turned off to all those facilities at the direction of ERCOT.

We don't have trees and lines down, at least not for the most part. I have 27 huge pine trees on my property and they have hardly any snow or ice on them. Our power lines are clean and dry. This isn't about line or tree damage, it's about not having enough power to go around.

This isn't an asteroid hitting the Earth. It's something that many of us have experienced during our lifetimes. In 1983 we had over two weeks of below freezing temperatures, several nights near zero, and snow on the ground from something like the 15th of December through New Year's. In 1989 we had below zero temperatures on Christmas Eve. Just three years ago we had single digit temperatures. When I grew up in the 70s we had brutal winters, snow once a week for over a month when I was in high school. There was talk of a coming ice age in the late 70s.

This isn't just a winter problem, either. A couple of years ago in August hundreds of thousands of us were without power long enough to lose all the food in our refrigerators and freezers during a heat wave. That was shortly after the Monticello plant that could have cooled those homes was shut down.

This is a cluster of epic proportions. Once the immediate crisis passes there will be plenty of talk and flowery speeches, but I doubt anything that will ensure we don't go through this again will really happen.

Monticello, Fairfield, Martin Creek, and Welsh are all related to bass fishing. We wouldn't have a thread about trying to save Monticello for fishing if the 1.8 gigawatt power plant there hadn't closed.

WOW what a rabbit hole. Anymore info or pics on hard water on Lake Fork?


Razor aren't you one of the guys that used to rant about lake Tyler?

Greg u said it thats the truth there

LOL Ken! I nominate you to sing a version of You Light Up My Life! THAT would be entertaining!

It’s still frozen.

I didn't realize I was blocking anyone from posting. You got pictures or info on Lake Fork or any other lake?

I remember very well 2 winters in Okie city back in the 60s that were almost this bad.

one they had to get the national guard out of will rogers to fly hay in c130s out to farms in west Okieland, could barely drive the roads and only if you convoyed cars etc. were you likely to get thru. dad and some of his friends that owned ranches out there had to buy skidoos to take care of cattle, as I remember it lasted almost a month with heavy snow on the ground, seems like probably 4' or more around leedy and weatherford. Okie city had over 2' for 2-3 weeks, we had a blast as kids and our dog loved pulling the lil red sled.

second one was really bad ice storm, trashed the whole state and probably into dfw pretty good, school was out for 2-3 weeks for that one.
I can also remember one may it snowed over 2' as my birthday is in may and I got snow ice cream with the cake, party sucked since only 3-4 kids could walk to our house.

climate change/global warming has been going on since time began and will continue as long as the planet is here. yes we could do more to abate what we add but we will never in our lifetimes, kids lifetimes or grandkids lifetimes be able to alter the climate to what we want, it is a political game for profit plain and simple.

Patience Razorback, soon as Ted Cruz gets back from Cancun we can ask him. . .

Remember Feb 1-5, 2011 winter outages. Superbowl was in Dallas I believe.

This was a repeat except this was cold enough to impact delivery of natural gas which multiplied the outages compared to 2011.

2011 outage report stated power grid needed to be winterized. It was not because ERCOT power grid is de-regulated with profits and cheap energy being a priority over reliability.

Lenin said, "I will hang the capitalist with the rope I bought from him". So profit over security, profit over lives.
Business math says, this kind of cold only happens every 7-10 years.

Vote better next time.

It's not Governor Abbott's fault. I think he knows the man in charge is always going to be blamed (Trump and Covid, anyone?), so he is pointing fingers at everything and everyone else to divert attention from government's role in this disaster.

"It's not that terrible decisions were made by government and bureaucracy, it's that it was really cold and greedy corporations didn't spend enough money!"

Any pics of frozen parts of Lake Fork??

where is this Lake Fork everyone is posting about? never heard of it.

The Rog does abide......😎 Buddy sent me this yesterday. Leafy. That is snow on what is normally lake in the middle of the pic.

back to a fishing question. Or close to fishing. Will the ice hurt the docks. I have a shared dock at my trailer on Fork. I know up north they have portable docks that they pull up on land in the winter but of course they freeze much deeper. I wouldn't think a few inches would matter, but my dock's in a cove that's not that deep so sure it's frozen over.