Hard freeze on the way tonight, as Houston nears the end of the cold wave

Good evening, everyone. We just want to freshen up the situation a bit for you this evening. Thank you to Eric for holding down the fort as I wrangled power, water, work, and children like so many of our readers the last couple days. I hope this finds you powered.

CenterPoint is still reporting about 15,000 customers without power. This means 99.5% of the Houston area should have power back now. Just over 350,000 customers are still without power across Texas, which is down from 620,000 this morning. Many of those are due to issues stemming from ice in recent days. Per ERCOT, we’re still in a tenuous situation, but it sounds a like things are much more stable than they have been.

So it goes. We encourage you to continue to conserve power so the overall situation continues to improve.

The water situation is still a bit difficult. A boil water notice continues in Houston and many other places.

The city of Houston is directing bottled water distribution through city council member offices, so we’d encourage you to reach out your representative’s office if you need access. As for other communities, please check their websites, social media feeds, etc. Various news media in the city have also put together lists for this.

If you or someone you know need something more urgently or can provide support to those that may have those needs, please utilize the Crowdsource Rescue website. This organization has been working tirelessly and doing great things.

I’d encourage our readers to drop any advice or information about other organizations doing important work through the freeze in the comments section.

On to the weather.

Tonight & tomorrow

It was nice to see the sun in much of the area today, and temperatures did push 40 degrees. Meanwhile, Del Rio saw 10 inches of snow. It’s been a weird, weird week, y’all.

Clear skies and diminishing winds will allow for another night of cold, cold temperatures.

Nighttime lows will be in the 20s for most areas away from the coast. (Weather Bell)

Nighttime lows will be in the 30s for Galveston, around 30 or upper-20s in the Bay Area and Chambers County, mid to upper 20s for the south side of Houston and Brazoria County, mid-20s north of Houston and Fort Bend County, and low-20s, with pockets of upper-teens possible in Montgomery County, Liberty County, and points north. Generally, the farther north and west you go, the colder it will be. Thus, a Hard Freeze Warning is in effect tonight for most of the region. Continue to keep pipes and plants fully protected, and make sure to check on people and bring pets inside.

The good news is that temperatures will recover quickly tomorrow. All areas should be back above freezing by late morning with full sunshine. Look for highs tomorrow to top out in the mid-40s in most places except the far northwest.

There will likely be another freeze tomorrow night, but temperatures will probably be about 3 to 6 degrees warmer than tonight. The finish line is in sight. I’ll have the latest on the rest of the forecast tomorrow morning, and I can almost promise to bore you to tears, which is exactly what I think we’re looking for right now.

25 thoughts on “Hard freeze on the way tonight, as Houston nears the end of the cold wave”

  1. Thanks again for all of you at SCW!!! I’ve noticed that in the last several posts the comments section was missing. Via my computer which I’m on now, once I clicked the title link the web version of the post came up and I was able to access the comments section.

    Also, despite always checking the “save my name..” box, it never saves my name.

    Just something for the dull and boring weather days hopefully coming next week!!

    Keep up the good work as always!!!!

  2. Both of you, Eric and Matt, have done a phenomenal job as always, even while juggling power, water, internet, family, and everything else for each of you during all this. Mega Kudos to both of you.

  4. Really appreciate you guys good info. I don’t feel all that special being one of the last homes without power.

  6. I know questions posted in the comments usually do not get responses, but I think SCW owes it to everyone to explain why comments were disabled for the past couple of days. Any explanations?

    • I wonder if people started getting political with power outages and finger pointing? They seem to try to steer clear of that

    • During normal conditions, non-spam comments on Space City Weather are published without moderation. We can do this because the community here is, generally, quite friendly and polite.

      On Monday, as the topic of electricity understandably became quite heated, the topic quickly turned political. There was a lot of misinformation posted, and the comments were becoming non-polite. At that time I did not have electricity, and Matt would lose it a short time later. Additionally, neither of us had the time at that moment to focus on moderation. (I was trying to find somewhere to move my family, and Matt was working his day job). So we took the expedient step of nuking comments and turning them off. Less hassle for us at a time neither of us had bandwidth for hassle.

      Since we’re now coming out of the storm, so to speak, comments have been turned back on.

      • Thank you very much. I just found it odd that the comments were disabled since y’all are so open with people. Not trying to start anything as implied by the non-polite comment below.

      • Good for you both! I am glad you took care of your families. Rude people can wait, and you never let us down with weather news. We appreciate everything you do. Please don’t hesitate to shut down comments in the future if it means you need to take care of family rather than babysit complainers. This is not a political forum…the information on how to reach our state senators, representatives, and the governor can all be found online–THAT is who they need to be contacting.

      • Thank you so much for that. Not everything has to be political but here lately, everything seems to turn that direction and goes downhill quickly. Y’all have done great at juggling all of this. Thank you…as always.

    • I think SCW owes nothing to anyone and has the freedom to offer their service however they see fit. Anyone who thinks they can do better has the freedom to try.

  8. Thank you so much for all you do to keep us aware and safe. Being able to plan for my family was what kept me able to help them until we were all waiting it out the best we could. I always look to Space City Weather for accuracy and all the information I didn’t know I needed 😊

  9. Thank you Space City Weather for your coverage of this storm. We all sincerely appreciate the work you do!

  10. I am glad that you guys are putting pressure on the politicians to harden our infrastructure in the event of natural disasters, be they hurricanes, floods, or winter storms. I would be willing to pay a dedicated infrastructure tax for things like barriers against storm surge, better flood control, and winterizing of water and electric infrastructure. Private enterprise, especially those that have made hundreds of millions of dollars of profit on what once were called “public” utilities, also owe it to the rest of us invest some of it to deliver improvements, not just to their own infrastructures but also to their management processes.

  11. Thanks guys for your hard work and for providing a sense of community, what a wild ride this has been. Stay warm.

  12. Thanks for the hard work. I am wondering if Friday is safe to turn on the water? I have shut down the water to avoid bursting pipe. I am worried if Friday night will be cold enjoy for pipe to burst. I live south of 1-10 energy corridor area thanks

  13. Your detailed, well-written reports provide a “calm during the storm” for me. Thank you for providing this service to us!

  15. Yes, thank you! And, it was somewhat cathartic for me when you guys expressed your anger in your posts. Since you are no-hype and no-nonsense, when you say it? Well, it’s most certainly must be justified!

    Again, thank you for being a solid source of useful information. Great job giving us ways to help, too! You guys represent the best of Houston; we love you!

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