Instead of arrows, Cupid delivered a very cold shot of air Valentine’s Day 2021, which may go down as one of the coldest in history.
A polar vortex (a large area of low pressure and cold air surrounding both of the Earth’s poles) arrived, plunging Texas temperatures that day from a high of 22 degrees to a low in the single digits.
For Texans, that was only the beginning. When the state’s residents started turning up thermostats to heat their homes, the demand was so high and supply so low that the power grid’s governing agency reported that it had no choice but to implement “rolling blackouts” that later failed leaving many in the state without electricity for days. What caused this catastrophic failure of Texas’ electric grid? Find out in this episode of GeoNews brought to you by UT Dallas’ Geoscience Studios.
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