Texans hunkering down ahead of historic winter storm

AccuWeather

Storm chaser Aaron Jayjack reported live from Texas on Jan. 20, showing how the region is preparing for snow, ice and bitter cold.

Transcript

00:00Aaron, you spend a lot of time thousands of miles in cold snow and ice farther north.

00:05This is a big deal there in the Gulf Coast region.

00:13Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is normally chasing hurricanes here in the warm weather,

00:18the warm Gulf. You know, even in the winter, usually having that warm weather. And right now,

00:22it feels like winter here in Houston. It feels like the northern plains almost. We've got wind,

00:27we've got cold. And more importantly, we have a winter storm warning that's going to go into

00:32effect here in the next hour or two, 6pm Central Time here in Houston. With this major winter

00:37storm that's going to come across the I-10 corridor, the Gulf of Mexico, this Gulf Coast

00:43region, seeing a storm that they're not usually used to. You know, this is a rare event where we

00:47could possibly see four inches of snow or even more here in areas of the downtown Houston. The

00:53I-10 corridor is expected to be crippled. You know, this is a major artery that allows people,

00:58travelers, truckers, to travel from the west coast to the east coast, from California all the way to

01:02Jacksonville, Florida. And it is going to likely be shut down tomorrow from San Antonio points to

01:08the east through Houston, New Orleans. All this area is expected snow and besides the snow leading

01:15up to the snow, likely freezing rain, sleet, all the wintery mixes are going to be going on here

01:20in the I-10 corridor. Tomorrow is a day you're not going to want to be out on the roads. You're

01:25going to want to be hunkered down, staying indoors. You know, they've been prepping here in Houston,

01:29lots of salt being dropped on the sidewalk here in front of businesses. Not a lot going on in

01:34downtown except we're in front of the Toyota Center where they did have a basketball game

01:38today, this afternoon, squeezing one last event in before people, folks here in Houston are likely

01:44shut down and locked inside their homes trying to stay warm for the next couple of days.

01:48Erin, I see the wind there blowing the flags. How's it feeling out there? Are you already

01:52feeling, you know, the chill, kind of the wind making things worse?

02:00You know, definitely it's cold. You know, I actually, I came from, I flew out of Bismarck,

02:05North Dakota this morning where we had negative 20 Fahrenheit. So we're just a few degrees above

02:09freezing. It actually feels kind of warm to me, but lots of people here are hunkered down wearing

02:15their winter clothes that they probably don't wear very often. But it is windy. It's still cold

02:20here for me, just not like what I experienced way up north earlier this morning. But like I said,

02:25you know, this is going to be a dangerous situation. Besides the roads being bad,

02:29the cold weather is going to cause a lot of problems, especially, you know, there's a large

02:33homeless population here down in the southern part of the United States, especially here in Houston.

02:38They're going to want to get into shelters tonight. You're not going to want to be out,

02:42not going to be out driving for sure. It's going to be very bad driving conditions. You know,

02:46they are trying to treat the roads here. You can see the brine lines on the interstates as we drove

02:50around. So they're doing the best that they can, but they just don't have a lot of equipment down

02:54here to remove the snow. So they're going to be reliant on temperatures warming up, which may

02:58take a couple of days for those temperatures to warm up and then melt that snow, try and get

03:02things back to normal here. Maybe a mid to late week Thursday, maybe things aren't going to get

03:07back to normal here in the Houston area. And Aaron, you mentioned some of the ways that people

03:13are preparing there. You mentioned not a lot of people out and about right now. Have you gotten

03:17any sense from people there? Are they all, you know, have already made their trip to the store

03:21to stock up? Are people still doing that? What's your sense about how they're preparing?

03:30I actually, I was at Target earlier today and talked to the lady there that was working the

03:36register and she actually mentioned how it's been busy for four days. So this is a well-advertised

03:41storm. I think most people have gotten their preparations out of the way, stocked up on

03:45everything they're going to need days in advance. And now people are just waiting for this storm.

03:49You know, there's a, I know there's a hill nearby here. I saw online people talking about

03:53that might get some action with some sledding here tomorrow afternoon. So we'll probably go

03:57check that out tomorrow afternoon, see if people are going to come out and actually enjoy something.

04:02You know, there's probably plenty of people here in the Houston area that have never experienced

04:06snow before. They're younger. They, you know, they've never had a snowstorm and this is going

04:10to be their first chance to experience snow. Get out, hit the, hit the hills here and go do some

04:15sledding. Hopefully, hopefully people have shovels here as well. I don't know if there's a lot of

04:19shovels. I've been looking around. We drove by Home Depot and I thought I might see some people

04:23walking out with shovels and I didn't see anybody walking out with shovels. So I just go to show that,

04:27you know, there isn't a lot of ways to be prepared here other than getting plenty of food and water.

04:32Getting, trying to stay warm and stay indoors and be prepared for power outages. You know, with this

04:37cold and with ice, you're going to have one, the grid being impacted from people trying to heat

04:42their homes. So it's going to put some stress on the grid and then you potentially are going to

04:46have ice problems or potentially bring down trees, bring down power lines. So hopefully we don't lose

04:51power here. You know, we just, they just dealt with power outages here in Houston this summer

04:56with the hurricane that came through. I believe it was Beryl came through this summer in June,

04:59caused a lot of problems here in Houston. Well, hopefully we don't have a repeat of

05:03that because at least in June it was warm. You could deal with the, with the power outages a

05:08little bit better. But now in the winter with no heat, you're, you know, power outages can be

05:13really dangerous situation or deadly even if it gets cold enough and the power stays out long

05:18enough. Yeah. Some great advice there from storm chaser, Aaron Jayjack. Thank you for that update.

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