The Great Texas Freeze of 2021
By Alben Osaki
Back in February of 2021, Texas, in the southern United States, was hit with one of the craziest weather events I’ve ever personally experienced, when a snowstorm pummeled the state. This was huge – I mean, it has its own Wikipedia page. It was the worst infrastructure failure in the history of the state. Damage was in the billions of dollars. Hundreds of people died. Over the course of about a week, I learned way more about the Lone Star State’s electricity grid than I ever thought I would care to know. It was a crazy experience, and one I’m told is once in a lifetime (though because of climate change, I suspect the next one is around the corner). As we come up to the anniversary of the event, I thought I’d share my rather bland personal account of what happened.
A neighbor’s car. The wind was so strong the night before that trees broke and branches fell everywhere. Credit: Alben Osaki.
I distinctly remember waking up that morning on February 15th and feeling like something was off (spoiler alert: it was the electricity that was off). Waking up to no electricity is a weird feeling. Everything just feels eerily quiet. No kettles boiling water, no hum of the refrigerator, and only a partially charged phone. It's like all the snow and ice had frozen time at some point over the course of the night.
“Snow in Austin.” I thought, “Wild.”
Looking outside at all the snow and ice, I knew immediately that I wouldn’t be able to make it to work. My car was covered in snow, and the roads were slick. Besides, I grew up in Hawaii. What do I know about driving in the snow? I wasn’t even going to try.
After calling out of work and having nothing better to do, I decided to explore the neighborhood, hoping that the electricity would be back soon. The central heating had been off for hours and the apartment was already getting cold.
Trudging through the shin-high snow, I walked down the street and ran into a girl near the bottom of a small hill. “Go!” I heard her yell, as a guy on a snowboard came riding down to her, both of them laughing at the absurdity of what they were doing.
A neighbor rides his snowboard down a hill in Austin, TX. Credit: Alben Osaki
I think in the early stages, most people were still in a jovial mood. Kids were playing outside, and people were laughing and lounging about in the snow. What a cool (pun intended) way to spend your day and burn some time if you didn’t have any power.
By nightfall, the mood soured. Electricity was still out, but luckily I found a few power banks with some charge still left in them. Sitting in the dark, cold, apartment, eating leftovers in the fridge before it spoiled, I scrolled Reddit and news sites, hoping to get an update on when I might be able to cook again. “Rolling blackouts,” they said. “Expect electricity to return for short periods before going out again.”
I didn’t have electricity for fifty-five hours.
It’s weird writing that now, nearly a year removed from the storm. Fifty-five hours doesn’t sound like a lot. That’s barely over two days; it sounds so privileged! I’ve gone camping for longer than that without electricity.
But in my head, I swear it was more like two weeks. I guess when you have nothing else to do except lay in bed under six blankets as you try not to freeze to death, time feels really slow. And that’s only barely hyperbole as, as I said before, people died. By the end of this whole ordeal, an estimated 246 people will have perished.
A group of people try to push a truck up a low-grade hill, as the SUV in front of it tries to tow. They were unsuccessful and the truck had to turn around. Credit: Alben Osaki
It’s not like the entire city was shut down, though. If you were lucky enough to be on the same grid as a hospital or emergency services, you never lost power. In fact, my neighbors just across from me had electricity. I remember staring longingly into the apartment windows not fifty feet away. I distinctly remember one of them even had their ceiling fan running. That means their apartment was so warm, they decided to turn on the fan. “What an asshole.” I thought to myself, as I pulled a blanket over my head in my thirty-eight-degree apartment.
I remember a lot of that time being spent on my phone (I was charging it via the laundry room of the building across from me, right under the asshole with the ceiling fan) looking for news updates. Mostly it was just articles of politicians or city officials telling us the electricity would be back “soon”. Also, Ted Cruz went to Cancun and got publicly shamed into returning. That was pretty funny, in an infuriating kind of way.
Empty shelves in the convenience store around the corner. Credit: Alben Osaki
Additionally, I spent a lot of time in the r/Austin subreddit. Mostly it was folks posting what street they lived on and reporting if they had power or not. Banister Lane, still no power. I would diligently report every couple of hours. Not that it was any real help. Just a way for everyone to pass the time and celebrate if/when their lights turned back on.
I remember getting into a conversation with one internet stranger in particular.
Do you know if Barton Hills has electricity? My grandma lives there and is elderly. We haven’t been able to get in touch with her. She can’t walk well and we can’t drive to check on her. We’re worried about her, as she can’t start the fireplace herself.
I volunteered to go check on her. Barton Hills was only a little over two miles away. But two miles in ice and snow is treacherous. I knew I should have bought that pair of YakTrax when I was in REI the other day.
Important provisions. Credit: Alben Osaki
Luckily for everybody, right before heading out, I received another message telling me that they had finally gotten in touch with their grandmother and that her neighbors were taking care of her. A bit anticlimactic in the end, but a positive outcome nonetheless.
Looking back, it was such a surreal experience. Just a week later, it was almost like nothing had even happened. The snow melted and power and water returned to most of the city. I returned to work and it made for some good water-cooler chat for another week or two before we all just kind of moved on.
Still though, snow in Austin. Wild.
Alben Osaki is a photojournalist and filmmaker residing in South Texas, with a focus on the outdoors.
