Important Takeaways:
- With around 270,000 homes and businesses still without power in the Houston area almost a week after Hurricane Beryl hit Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott on Sunday said he’s demanding an investigation into the response of the utility that serves the area as well as answers about its preparations for upcoming storms.
- “Power companies along the Gulf Coast must be prepared to deal with hurricanes, to state the obvious,” Abbott said
- While CenterPoint Energy has restored power to about 2 million customers, the slow pace of recovery has put the utility, which provides electricity to the nation’s fourth-largest city, under mounting scrutiny over whether it was sufficiently prepared for the storm that left people without air conditioning in the searing summer heat.
- Abbott said he was sending a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Texas requiring it to investigate why restoration has taken so long and what must be done to fix it.
- With months of hurricane season left, Abbott said he’s giving CenterPoint until the end of the month to specify what it’ll be doing to reduce or eliminate power outages in the event of another storm.
- A post Sunday on CenterPoint’s website from its president and CEO, Jason Wells, said that over 2,100 utility poles were damaged during the storm and over 18,600 trees had to be removed from power lines, which impacted over 75% of the utility’s distribution circuits.
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Important Takeaways:
- Houston Mayor John Whitmire said strong winds and “some twisters” hit the area, downing power lines, spreading debris and leaving many roads impassable
- The winds reached 100 mph and included some tornadoes
- A widespread 3 to 6 inches of rain fell north of Houston, with one of the highest rainfall totals reported being around 6.90 inches in 24 hours near Romayor.
- In Texas, the night’s destruction was evident even before sunrise, with high winds tearing out windows of high-rise buildings in downtown Houston, and inundating the region with flooding.
- Streets in the area were littered with glass, electrical lines and other detritus strewn by the ferocious storms.
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Important Takeaways:
- Winter has some tricks left up its sleeve as millions of people across the region brace for a nor’easter that’s impacting cities like Boston and New York City with wind gusts up to 60 mph and heavy rain, while areas farther north are preparing for the possibility of feet of snow
- More than 116,000 customers lost power in Maine as of Thursday morning while 48,000 New Yorkers were left in the dark
- This comes after the Midwest and Great Lakes region saw their fair share of winter weather, with portions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula under a Blizzard Warning while other areas of the state, as well as parts of Wisconsin, remain under Winter Storm Warnings and Winter Weather Advisories.
- Flooding a concern due to heavy rain, melting snow
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Important Takeaways:
- Catastrophic flooding swamps Los Angeles area as deadly atmospheric river slams California
- NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center has placed about 14 million people in Southern California, including Los Angeles, under a rare “high risk” of flash flooding as the storm has already dumped several inches of rain, with much more to come.
- The “high risk” is the highest rung on NOAA’s flash flood threat scale and is only issued under the most dire of flooding forecasts. “Life-threatening flash and urban flash flooding possible in the high risk area,” the WPC said.
- Los Angeles picked up 4.10 inches of rain on Sunday, which far exceeded the daily rainfall record for that date set in 1927, which was 2.55 inches.
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a State of Emergency for several counties in California to help support storm response and recovery efforts.
- The state had mobilized and prepositioned a record 8,500 emergency responders ready to respond to flooding, landslides and travel emergencies, according to the governor’s office.
- The State of Emergency included Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties.
- The atmospheric river storm had also prompted emergency officials in several areas to order evacuations and open emergency shelters for residents.
- Several schools in the area were also closed because of the extreme weather event
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Important Takeaways:
- A winter storm brought intense downpours and strong winds to California on Sunday, leaving hundreds of thousands without power and flooding roadways across the state.
- According to Accuweather, up to 37 million people, or about 94% of the state’s population, were at risk for life-threatening floods from the storm.
- The National Weather Service issued a rare hurricane-force wind warning for the central coast on Sunday as wind gusts up to 92 mph were possible from the Monterey Peninsula to the northern section of San Luis Obispo County.
- The atmospheric river was the second to hit the state in just a few days, although forecasters said Sunday’s storm would be the season’s most potent, particularly in Southern California.
- Evacuation warnings and orders were in effect for Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Ventura and Monterey counties
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Important Takeaways:
- ‘Hurricane equivalent’ winds and torrential rains leave more than 120,000 without power in Florida as more than 7million are under flood watch
- Nearly 120,000 homes in Florida are without power after ‘hurricane’ level winds and torrential rain hit the state overnight.
- Thousands of people have woken up in the dark across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach amid hurricane-force winds, with over 7 million people under flood watch.
- The National Weather Service has called the wind speeds recorded in some of these areas ‘hurricane equivalent’, as they topped 74mph.
- In an advisory, they said: ‘Damaging winds will blow down trees and power lines. Widespread power outages are expected.’
- Forecasters have said that rainfall today will likely reach five to eight inches across Miami and the Fort Lauderdale areas of South Florida, with some areas being hit with 12 inches, according to Fox Weather.
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had to declare a state of emergency as storms caused mass flooding, after they dumped two feet of rain in a matter of hours.
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Important Takeaways:
- Nation at risk of winter blackouts as power grid remains under strain
- A sweeping portion of the country that extends from Texas to the Canadian border is not adequately equipped for tough winter conditions, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation warned in a forecast released Wednesday. The report is a sobering assessment of a power grid that continues to fray and suffer from underinvestment, despite promises by politicians and regulators to shore it up following deadly blackouts in recent years
- “Much of North America is at an elevated risk of insufficient energy supplies this winter and is highly exposed to risks of energy emergencies in extreme winter conditions,” the regulator, known as NERC, wrote in a statement that accompanied the report.
- A major concern is the potential for disruptions in natural gas generation, as power plants and the infrastructure that delivers fuel to them are destabilized by the strain of extreme cold. It is the pattern that played out last year during Winter Storm Elliott, which resulted in cascading outages throughout the eastern United States just before Christmas.
- The regional grid that serves 15 states from Arkansas to Wyoming will be operating with significantly lower backup energy reserves than last year as a result of some power plants coming off line and demand for electricity in the region increasing. NERC warned that while the region has the resources it needs to make it through a normal winter, extreme cold weather could “result in shortfalls that can trigger energy emergencies.”
- The rapid addition of renewable energy onto the grid presents its own challenges, the report warns, which could inflame debate about the extent to which the energy transition disrupts reliability. NERC officials noted, for example, that the installation of large volumes of new solar power in Texas will do little to help the state through the winter, as demand tends to peak after sundown. But NERC’s findings make clear that problems with fossil fuel generation bear a large share of responsibility for the wobbly state of the nation’s electricity system.
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Luke 21:25 ““And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves,
Important Takeaways:
- As Atmospheric River Exits, a New Storm Threatens California
- Wet, miserable weather continued across huge swaths of California on Sunday as an atmospheric river that caused major flooding flowed eastward, while a new storm threatened another onslaught of rain, snow and gusting winds as soon as Monday.
- The National Weather Service said the next system could exacerbate severe flooding that overwhelmed the area in recent days, prompting a levee failure and widespread evacuations Saturday in farming communities near the state’s central coast.
- Monday’s incoming rain and snow is expected to extend from central California to Oregon and northern Nevada. Wind gusts of up to 50 mph (80 kph) are expected in some places and could damage power lines and snap tree branches.
- Over the past two days, more than 20 inches (50 centimeters) of snow fell at a measuring station in the Sierra Nevada, and more is expected. The snowpack is now nearly twice the average, and the highest in about four decades, according to UC Berkeley’s Central Sierra Snow Lab.
- Gavin Newsom has declared emergencies in 34 counties in recent weeks
- President Joe Biden spoke with Newsom on Saturday to pledge federal support for California’s emergency response
- Weather-related power outages affected more than 17,000 customers in Monterey
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- FBI on South Carolina probe of possible sabotage at electric plant
- The FBI is investigating gunfire near a South Carolina power plant that occurred just as electricity for tens of thousands in North Carolina was restored
- We are aware of reports of gunfire near the Wateree Hydro Station in Ridgeway, South Carolina,” a Duke Energy spokesperson said in a statement emailed to Fox News Digital. “No individuals were harmed. There are no outages reported. There is no known property damage at this time.”
- “We are working closely with the FBI on this issue,” the statement added.
- Multiple sources told CBS News that an individual pulled up in a truck outside the power plant in Kershaw County around 5:30 p.m. before opening fire. The person used what appeared to be a long gun before speeding away
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Important Takeaways:
- Moore County: Updates on power outages, resources, investigation
- Duke Energy’s outage map shows that about 34,000 customers are still without power in Moore County as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.
- In total, about 72% of the more than 47,000 Duke Energy customers served in the county remain without power Wednesday.
- Duke Energy said Tuesday afternoon that the company “anticipates having nearly all customers restored by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.”
- Officials say the investigation into the attack is ongoing, with local, state and federal authorities “working around the clock.” No arrests have been made, and no suspects have been named yet.
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