Texans, seize your coats and winter jackets: The state is girding up for a number of wintry situations and chilly temperatures by the top of this week. The unhealthy climate comes lower than two weeks earlier than the anniversary of a winter storm that brought on energy outages throughout the state amid bone-chilling situations that killed lots of of individuals.

“No one can guarantee there won’t be [power outages],” Governor Greg Abbott said throughout a press convention held Tuesday. (It ought to be famous that in December, Abbott told a local news station he might “guarantee the lights will stay on” this winter. Weird discrepancy there, Greg!)

The storm coming to Texas is a part of a large swath of unhealthy climate set to hit a 2,000-mile stretch of the U.S. this week (branded Winter Storm Landon by the Weather Channel). Winter storm warnings are in place for locations as far south as elements of New Mexico and Texas that contact the border with Mexico, extending diagonally all the way in which as much as corners of New Hampshire that border Canada. The storm, which extends some 2,000 miles throughout the U.S. is at present making a large number within the Rockies and elements of the Great Plains and Midwest, has already dumped 6 inches of snow on Denver, and areas in Missouri and Illinois have seen no less than that a lot. Another entrance of chilly air blowing in after the storm implies that quite a lot of that precipitation will flip to ice, making journey situations treacherous in lots of areas of the nation by Friday.

There are some key variations between the unhealthy climate headed Texas’s method now and what occurred in 2021. Generally, Texans shouldn’t count on situations this week to be as chilly as what they noticed final 12 months. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, temperatures might fall to a low of 5 levels Fahrenheit (-15 levels Celsius). That’s positively chilly for Texas, however nothing just like the -5 levels Fahrenheit (-20.5 levels Celsius) that hit in February 2021. Last February’s chilly snap was additionally extra like a chilly drag, as the realm noticed temperatures at or beneath freezing for seven days straight; this storm ought to solely have Dallas-Fort Worth sitting at freezing temperatures for 3 days. Increased demand for power throughout the excessive and prolonged chilly was a part of what drove the widespread grid failure, and it appears unlikely that Texas will see these situations once more.

This storm does have the potential for a lot heavier ice and sleet in elements of Texas than final 12 months’s storm. Abbott warned throughout the press convention that the ice on timber or energy traces might trigger native traces to fail and create outages, and warned drivers of icy situations on the highway.

Even comparatively milder storms like this one might nonetheless show a take a look at for Texas’s grid. Reforms for the grid, which specialists had lengthy warned was susceptible to widespread failure, turned entrance and middle after the storm, with combined outcomes: Abbott signed two reforms into regulation in June, one in every of which overhauled the management of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the grid, whereas the opposite mandated winterization of the grid. (In August, Ed Hirs, a professor of power economics on the University of Houston, instructed Earther that the reforms have been simply “political theater.”)

Natural gasoline infrastructure, nonetheless, acquired a lot of wiggle room with these winterization mandates, regardless of pure gasoline services being one of many key causes of final 12 months’s blackouts. There might be bother forward if this week’s climate will get unhealthy sufficient. More than 10% of the pure gasoline provide to the grid was minimize off in January throughout a chilly snap, whereas some pure gasoline suppliers have already informed ERCOT this week that their provide received’t be reaching mills this week as a result of chilly climate.

One factor’s for certain, although: The bad-faith actors who helped unfold falsehoods about frozen wind turbines being answerable for final 12 months’s catastrophe are as soon as once more laborious at work. In Wednesday’s version of its emailed e-newsletter, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative suppose tank with deep ties to fossil fuels that persistently promotes an anti-renewables agenda, falsely claimed that “Texas is relying entirely on wind and solar” to gasoline its grid, claiming if the “wind doesn’t blow,” Texas might see extra outages. (Okay, y’all. Whatever you say.)

These lies have been repeated final 12 months by Abbott and varied different politicians—who subsequently used the blackouts to push anti-renewables laws. If one thing does occur this week, sit up for listening to extra of the identical.