Lists Worth Keeping · From real events
What ran short in the Texas freeze. And what held.
Ten things 4.5 million households ran out of in February 2021, with the numbers behind each one.
By Dan Whelan, founder of New World Survival
Researched from government agencies, university extension services, and other published sources. See our sources
01 · The story
Six days below freezing, nine minutes from the edge.
The forecasts were right. A week before the cold arrived, the National Weather Service was predicting an arctic outbreak across Texas, and grid operators sent generators notices asking them to prepare. On Sunday, February 14, the temperature fell across the state and stayed down for six days. Dallas reached minus 2. Houses built to shed heat in August began losing it by the hour.
Early on Monday morning, February 15, power plants started tripping offline. Instruments froze. Natural gas wells and pipelines froze. Plants that needed gas could not get it at pressure, and plants that needed electricity to move gas lost that too. By about 1:50 a.m., grid frequency had fallen below normal. Operators at ERCOT had roughly nine minutes to cut demand before some 17,000 megawatts of generation would have tripped off automatically and taken the whole grid with it. They cut 23,418 megawatts of firm load, the largest controlled load shed in American history, and the lights went out for more than 4.5 million customers.
Texans had been told to expect short, rolling outages. Those who lost power were out for an average of 42 hours. More than two in five went over 24 straight hours without it.
Then the water went. Treatment plants lost power and pressure, pipes burst in attics and walls, and water systems across the state issued boil notices. By Friday, February 19, the state environmental agency counted 14.9 million Texans with water problems. Grocery shelves emptied. Plumbers booked out for weeks. Families who had no safe way to make heat used gas ovens, charcoal grills, and patio heaters indoors, and emergency rooms filled with carbon monoxide cases.
The state's final count was 246 deaths across 77 counties. Nearly two-thirds were hypothermia. The oldest victim was 102. The youngest was under a year old.
What follows is not a list of what to buy. It is a list of what actually ran out, with the numbers behind each one, so you can see where the gaps were and decide what that means for your own house.
02 · The list
Ten things that ran out.
Each figure comes from the federal grid report, the state health department, the state environmental agency, or a survey of 1,500 Texans fielded a month after the storm. Sources are at the bottom of the page.
-
01
Electricity
69 percent of Texans in the ERCOT service area lost power. The average outage was 42 hours, and the longest single stretch averaged 31 hours. At the peak, more than 4.5 million customers were dark. The outages were supposed to rotate. For most people they did not.
-
02
Running water
49 percent lost running water, for an average of 52 hours. By February 20, 1,445 public water systems had reported disruptions, affecting 14.4 million people in 190 counties. The day before, the state agency counted 14.9 million Texans facing water problems. Power outages at treatment plants and burst pipes did most of the damage.
-
03
Water you could drink
Even people whose taps kept running went an average of 40 hours without water that was safe to drink. 63 percent said they had difficulty finding bottled water. The state ordered close to 10 million bottles and moved them with the National Guard.
-
04
Groceries
75 percent reported difficulty obtaining food or groceries, the single most common hardship in the survey. Stores lost power and could not take payment, trucks could not move on iced roads, and 47 percent of households had food spoil in dark refrigerators. The state ordered more than 5 million ready-to-eat meals.
-
05
Plumbers
31 percent of households had water damage, and 29 percent had trouble finding a plumber or other service professional. The governor waived licensing fees and exam requirements so that plumbers with expired licenses could work. 320 had renewed by February 19, and the state found 500 more licensees by February 23. Repairs still stretched into spring.
-
06
Internet and phones
71 percent lost internet service and 47 percent lost cell phone service at some point during the week. Battery backups at cell sites ran down as the outages stretched past a day. For many households the loss of information arrived at the same time as the loss of heat.
-
07
Safe heat
Among people who stayed home, 26 percent heated with a gas oven or cooktop, 8 percent brought a grill or smoker indoors, and 5 percent ran an outdoor propane heater inside. More than 1,400 Texans were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning that week. Carbon monoxide accounted for about 8 percent of the storm's deaths. This was the shortage that killed people who had already made it through the cold.
-
08
Natural gas itself
The fuel Texas assumed was limitless froze at the source. At the low point on February 17, gas production in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana was down more than 50 percent from January averages. Fuel problems caused 31.4 percent of the generator failures, second only to frozen equipment at 44.2 percent.
-
09
Margin at the grid
Grid frequency stayed below the level where generators begin tripping offline for more than four minutes. Operators had about nine minutes to act and used them. Had they not, the federal report concludes, the result would have been a complete blackout that could have taken weeks to restore. The margin that saved Texas was measured in minutes, not days.
-
10
Accurate expectations
This is the shortage that shaped all the others. Texans were told to prepare for short-term, rolling outages. People who would have filled bathtubs, gone to a relative's house, or bought a bag of charcoal for outdoor cooking did not, because nobody had told them the outage might last two days. 18 percent eventually left home, most of them for a relative's house.
03 · What held
The things that did not run out.
Neighbors. 63 percent of Texans relied at least a little on neighbors and friends for information during the storm, second only to local television at 68 percent. The networks that held were the ones that did not need electricity.
Relatives' homes. Of the 18 percent who left their homes, 44 percent went to a relative and 18 percent to a friend. Only 2 percent went to a public or church shelter. The most important warming center in Texas was somebody's living room.
Ordinary preparation, done early. Before the storm, 61 percent bought extra food, 58 percent bought bottled water, 55 percent filled the car with gas, 44 percent insulated pipes, and 43 percent stored tap water. None of that is specialized. All of it was done by people who believed the forecast.
Nine minutes of good judgment. The operators who cut power to millions kept the grid from failing entirely. It is a hard thing to call a success, and it was one.
04 · What it means for you
Five things to take from Texas.
The order matters. Power went first, then water, then food, then safe heat. Almost nobody runs out of all four at once, and the later ones are the easiest to prepare for. A few days of stored water and a way to cook outdoors cover two of them for less than the cost of a tank of gas.
Plan for the outage you were not told about. The official message was rolling outages. The reality was two days. If your plan only works for a few hours, extend it to 72 hours and see what breaks. Our winter power outage kit and the Top Energy list are built around that number.
Heat is the one you cannot improvise. Every indoor heat source that burns fuel without a vent produces carbon monoxide, and the Texas numbers show how many careful people reached for one anyway. Decide now what you will do for warmth without power, and read heating during outages before you need it.
Know where your water shutoff is. 44 percent insulated pipes and 24 percent shut off the water before the storm. Those were the households that did not spend March looking for a plumber. Our water system winterization guide walks through it.
The full account of the storm, including why the grid was built the way it was, is in our case study on Winter Storm Uri.
Sources
Where the numbers come from.
- FERC, NERC and Regional Entity Staff Report: The February 2021 Cold Weather Outages in Texas and the South Central United States (November 2021). Customers affected, load shed, minutes to collapse, causes of generator outages, natural gas production decline.
- The Winter Storm of 2021, Hobby School of Public Affairs, University of Houston (March 2021). Statewide survey: outage durations, water, groceries, plumbers, internet and phone, heat sources used, preparation actions, information sources, where people went.
- University of Houston news release on the Hobby School report (March 29, 2021). Summary figures and survey methodology.
- February 2021 Winter Storm-Related Deaths, Texas Department of State Health Services (December 31, 2021). 246 deaths, 77 counties, causes of death, ages.
- Take Care of Texas (a TCEQ program): water recovery update (February 2021). Peak of 14.9 million Texans facing water issues on February 19.
- Texas Tribune, February 20, 2021: Texas water and power outage update. TCEQ figures of 14.4 million people in 190 counties; state orders of bottled water and meals.
- Office of the Texas Governor, press releases of February 17, 19 and 23, 2021. Plumbing license waivers, 320 renewals, 500 additional licensees, natural gas export order.
- Texas Tribune, April 29, 2021: Texas enabled the worst carbon monoxide poisoning catastrophe in recent U.S. history. More than 1,400 people treated for carbon monoxide poisoning.
- Texas Tribune, March 29, 2021: Almost 70% of ERCOT customers lost power during winter storm. Residents told to prepare for short-term rolling outages.
All sources accessed 2026-11-09. Survey percentages come from the Hobby School of Public Affairs survey of 1,500 Texans in the ERCOT service area, fielded March 9 to 19, 2021, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 points.