(Bloomberg) -- A winter storm is poised to pummel Texas and the US South later this week, putting the region at risk of blackouts and travel mayhem.
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About 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) of snow and ice will fall across southern Oklahoma and Texas, including Dallas, coating trees, roads and power lines from San Antonio to northern Louisiana, said Peter Mullinax, a forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center.
The system “is going to be a disruptive one with significant accumulations of snow and ice,” Mullinax said. It will start to build Wednesday night, getting stronger on Thursday before sweeping east across the South on Friday.
The storm is likely to trigger widespread power outages, snarl transportation in a region where snow plows and salt trucks are rare, and ground or delay airline traffic. While temperatures won’t approach the extreme lows seen during the February 2021 storm that killed more than 200 people and left millions without power for days, any recurrence of cold raises concern about the stability of the state’s fragile power grid.
Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid operator, warned of possible tight power conditions Jan. 8 through Jan. 10 due to the storm. The highest probability of freezing rain is from the Hill Country into Northeast Texas, Ercot’s meteorologists said in a website posting Monday.
Still, Ercot expects to have enough supply to meet the increased electricity usage. Peak demand is forecast to reach about 72.8 gigawatts on Wednesday from 7 to 8 a.m., up from Tuesday’s estimated high of 68.9 gigawatts for the same period.
Power prices for Tuesday topped $100 a megawatt-hour for the Ercot North hub, which include Dallas, for 7 to 8 am.. That hour is seen as the riskiest for potential supply shortfalls in extreme conditions because demand is climbing at that time and the sun hasn’t yet risen high enough to generate solar power.
Even before the storm arrives, Texas has been struggling with cold temperatures. Dallas-Fort Worth reached an average of 31F Monday (minus 1C), or 15 below normal, according to the National Weather Service.
Houston’s average for the day was 39F, which was also 15 below normal. Cold weather advisories cover large parts of the US Gulf Coast from Texas to the Florida Panhandle, as well as parts of the Southwest. High winds are making temperatures feel even colder.