66 Degrees apart, the story from -6°F to +60°F

Today in Dallas has enjoyable weather at +60°F. But just 6 days ago, it was a completely different story.

As they say, “there is nothing between the Arctic and Texas, except barbed wire”.

For days we knew the polar vortex was coming to Dallas. I thought we were very well prepared and planned for everything right from groceries for the entire week, filling my cars with gas, parking one outside, buying water bottles, a Snow shovel, the wedge Key to turn off the water mains in case of a pipe bursts etc and was feeling pretty well prepared. We enjoyed a white valentine’s day. But one thing I did not plan for when the vortex arrived, was an extended power cut. That changed everything.

7 pm CT on Monday Feb 15th, as darkness fell it suddenly dawned on me that we are now trapped in our homes and have to figure out a way to keep the family members and our pets warm that night. With no power the entire day, temperatures inside the home were already freezing and rapidly dropping. Hotels were sold out. Friends from other communities, who had electricity, opened their doors and offered us to stay with them. But when some brave souls tried to venture out, they saw their cars trapped on the icy roads. With our phones almost drained out and the fireplace as the only source of light and heat (the feeble warmth made it look more like a candlelight), it was going to be an uphill battle in the cold and darkness.

We had to first secure the food supplies in the refrigerator as the lack of power supply could spoil the milk and groceries. With stores inaccessible or already sold out, replenishing them for a week was out of question. The concrete mixing plastic tubs I had gotten, with a plan to enjoy sledging in the snow with my family, now doubled up as storage for all the groceries. My teenager was watching in utter dismay as I shoveled fresh snow from outside to cover the essential groceries in the tube to keep them from rotting. Under normal circumstances would we have gotten an endorsement to get snow from the backyard to cover and preserve our food. But these were no ordinary times.

During Super bowl I planned to donate all the unused blankets to a local charity, but today it would come to our rescue. As we lay every comforter and blanket, we could find in the house, lying down close to the fireplace to try and beat the biting cold, I feared for my family’s safety. It would but take just one spark to ignite the whole place. It was a literal tinder box and we heard terrible stories about homes catching fire.

I pulled out the fire extinguishers close to our beds and demonstrated in the dull light of the fireplace on how we should use it. I also explained an escape plan in case of an emergency, grab your jackets and shoes before you run out!! In the worst case, we would spend the night running the heat inside the car I had parked outside, but thoughts about carbon monoxide poisoning were swirling in my mind. In the “brain freeze” that followed, I drowned my worry about how we will manage to grab all our important documents on the way out.

As temperatures dropped further, even with 3 blankets and 2 jackets on, we were still cold. Suddenly our pet developed a mind of its own. He wanted to sleep near the freezing door even if he was shivering. It was excruciating to even try and get out of your own blanket and trying to layer him and he would shake it off. With great difficulty I managed to pull him under my blanket for some part of the night.

Waking up every 30 min to keep an eye on the fireplace and checking on the family meant you hardly got a wink of sleep. At the first crack of dawn, I got up to check on everyone and looked at my phone with a dying batter, I noticed the temperature had dipped to -6°F. It felt like we were sleeping the tundra’s in winter with no jackets on. The house felt as if it had no walls and the freezing winds howling at the door were flowing freely inside.

Finally, it was daybreak and I thanked my stars for having survived such a frozen night with my family and pets waking up unscathed despite all the dangers around. My first thoughts and prayers went out to all the folks I know in the neighborhood, who had their parents with ailments, Young children some who were sick. Once the phones were charged during the day in the cars, we connected to check on everyone’s safety in the neighborhood. Everyone had a story of their own.

ERCOT could have at least sent all of us a text notification (like the amber alerts) earlier on Monday informing us that we can’t expect electricity to be back at our homes, it would have given us some time to plan. The pipe breakages, water shortages which continue to this day are causing untold hard ships to millions. I am sure the investigation will reveal a lot and we will put checks and balances in place before the next polar vertex comes back to Dallas.

While ERCOT is probably the most hated acronym right now. Despite the terrible experiences, I want to take away some of the positive experiences from this as the temperatures today came back to +60°F.

Enjoy every moment of life, don’t know what could change the next moment.

Renew family connects. No electricity meant no internet and no screen time. There are some things money can’t buy, this was one of them. With the entire family huddled by day near the fireplace, we renewed our bonding by sharing stories of our times during a power cut while growing up and reading physically printed books.

Coordinate with friends and neighbors. As they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. The crisis got our entire community together. Neighbors and friends helping each other with tools, tips, food, water. It did not matter if you voted Blue or red, we were humans at the end of the day.

On our way to normalcy (+60° F now!!)

Teachable moments...the kids learnt some real examples of the saying "if you fail to plan, then you better plan to fail"

A stark reminder let’s all work to protect our planet and do our part to preserve the environment. The polar vertex was a just wakeup call that when mother nature is the boss, Humans don’t even stand a chance.

Till next time take care and enjoy life!!