SAN ANTONIO – A relentless winter storm continued in Texas on Tuesday when record lows left millions of people without power.
According to the National Weather Service, bitterly cold temperatures not seen in more than 100 years have been recorded in San Antonio and Corpus Christi.
In San Antonio, temperatures dropped to 12 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, beating the previous record of 16 degrees set in 1895, the weather service said in a tweet. Corpus Christi broke his record of 20 degrees, which was also set in 1895. On Tuesday the temperature was 19 degrees.
Dallas and Wichita Falls also set new records on Tuesday, scoring minus 2 and minus 8 degrees, respectively.
The bitter cold contributed to an overloaded electrical system that led to power outages or total power outages for more than 3 million people. The Texas Electric Reliability Board, which oversees the state’s power grid, on Monday ordered rotatable power outages in an effort to prevent longer, uncontrolled power outages, NBC Dallas-Forth Worth reported.
Without the ability to turn on heaters, Texas residents were forced to resort to other means.
‘We only have so many blankets, like quite a few, and we go to the car and try to get warm there and get a phone fee and try to defy. [the electricity] switch back and forth. It’s not sustainable, ”says Juany Torres, a graduate student at the University of Texas and a resident of San Antonio.
Torres, her parents and her two siblings slept under heavy blankets to lower the icy temperature.
Torres said she had not experienced such drastic freezes, and she learned on Twitter that she had to let the water drip, saying she was not clear what it was doing. But they lost water for a while and now have no hot water. Their electric stove can not heat anything and the family does not have a braai area.
She and her family members already live together, so they do not have to break any Covid-19 protocols. But, she said, she and other family members living separately are now talking about how they can combine resources. An aunt with a gas stove might need to get in the bubble to keep everyone safe.
All 254 counties in Texas were under winter warnings and more than 3.2 million people in the state were without power Tuesday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.US.
“Like in the summer when everyone wants their air conditioning, everyone wants their heat and we’re putting the system and the electricity system under pressure,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research fellow at the Webber Energy Group / Energy Institute, University of Texas, Austin , told Texas Public Radio.
“Until the temperature returns to normal when we see it in the winter, there are still a few days of this, I think,” he said.
Rhodes said the idea behind the outage is to keep demand low, but also to keep the power in homes long enough to give people enough temperature to cook, clean and do what they need to do.
“It’s hard to do when power is out for so long,” he said.
Julian Gutierrez, 30, his two sisters and brother-in-law, also lives in southern San Antonio. His mother and his 10-year-old son were also with him, but it eventually got too cold and would get colder, and he sent the two to his grandmother because she had power. She also lives on the south side of town, about five minutes north of him, he said.
The last time he saw on his thermostat, the temperature in his house was 55, but the power has not been on since Monday and he can no longer read his thermometer.
Gutierrez said he was lying with clothes and blankets on. He experienced power outages, but the time between them became increasingly shorter until he had no power at all.
His family was able to use the microwave during the interruptions, but when the power finally turned off, they had to get creative. His brother-in-law found tealights, put them on top of a pound cake pan and used two large Gatorade Power cans to float a pot of water over the candles.
“We cooked Ramen all night,” Gutierrez said.
They planned to use a braai pit in the backyard on Tuesday.
Gutierrez said his grandmother’s house is too small and quickly becomes full of family. He was forced to stay as long as possible to withstand the cold.
Outside the grocery store La Michoacana and a nearby Walmart, people stood in freezing temperatures waiting to buy supplies. The stores only allowed a few people at a time to prevent overcrowding. People were masked, but there was not too much social distance.
Joanna Martinez, 29, waited in line to enter Walmart and buy Pampers. On the second of three days without power, she and her family went to stay in a hotel. The first hotel they tried did not have power, but eventually it became a hotel that did.
According to San Antonio City Councilman Adriana Garcia Rocha, the historic weather has also caused problems with the vaccination of San Antonio’s Covid-19 vaccination. She estimated that her area had about 3,000 unused doses in her district and west San Antonio that needed to be stored.
Download the NBC News app for news and politics
“We had to make sure that the vaccines were transferred to a place where there were no interruptions. “The San Antonio fire department helped bring them to a safe place,” she said. “We can not risk anything.”
The city has opened homeless shelters and hotels, she said. As for herself, she stayed in her home and relied on emergency supplies she had stored.
“Since the situation started in Covid, I have been using canned meat and just stuff that is easy to prepare, just in case,” she said. “Last night we ate grain for dinner and lit candles.”
Her braai pit is closed, she added.
Councilors tried to hold an emergency meeting, but she said five colleagues also did not have power, so they could not come online for a meeting. Hospitals, many nursing homes and other critical care facilities are on a separate network so their power is not interrupted, she said.
“It does not occur frequently in San Antonio, so there is a lot of learning, even by us,” she said.
Suzanne Gamboa reports from San Antonio and Alicia Victoria Lozano from Los Angeles.