Austin, Texas
Things got incredibly cold around here this week as an unprecedented storm hit Texas. These pictures in Austin (around our house) are beautiful, but I share them acknowledging that the conditions were terrible and dangerous for many throughout the state as power and water went out. Some of them Kim took while out on a walk one day.
The storm forecast just kept extending and looking worse and as we monitored the upcoming temperatures we were really concerned that our RV pipes would freeze. We tried to get the necessary material in order to weatherize our system, but after visiting several stores it became clear that wasn't going to be an option. Everyone in Austin was obviously trying to do the same thing! We had hoped by keeping the RV plugged in, and the furnace running, the temperatures in the storage/wet bay would remain above freezing. Jordan had installed thermostats in those areas and monitoring those on his app showed us that wasn't working. We woke up Saturday, Feb 13, and discovered it had gotten down to 30' for a few hours in those bays. With several more days of really cold night temperatures forecasted we decided the best option was to race to the warmest place we could find in Texas! Back to South Padre Island. It was an anxious trip as we didn't know whether our system had already been damaged by the freezing temperatures.
After our first night of boondocking we filled up our water tank and watched anxiously to see whether there were leaks. It appeared we had some minor ones but they were slow and the system was working so we decided to just keep our water pump off at all times unless we needed water. Then we turned it on, used water and turned it back off hoping that would help alleviate pressure on the system. The power went off on the island as well as water for the first 5 days but our newly installed Lithium Ion batteries did a great job and we basically boondocked through it. It was super windy with much colder temps than the last time we were here but we only had one day where it got down to this 32' mark at our location (the orange dot).
The one gas station on the island that had working gas pumps had lines that went for blocks as people tried to fill up.
After five days of feeling super cooped up I bundled up and walked a little over a mile to see the coast. That day it was a "feels like" temp of 29' with 30 mph winds so you can see that in this video. The first 5 days we saw very few birds anywhere and we assumed they were all trying to stay warm somewhere as the temperaturas were so unusually cold.
We didn't see any turtles but there was a pretty incredible sea turtle rescue happening on the island as people gathered thousands of turtles that had been cold stunned and put them inside the Convention center to try and warm them and save them.
Back in Austin, Kim was fortunate enough to maintain mostly steady power and has had water throughout the week. Austin is on a boil alert so she has been doing that the past few days. Brian's apartment complex had the water shut off and after a couple of days melting snow (with no indication about when they were going to be able to get the water back on) he made the move to our place and joined Kim. Luckily by then the roads were decent enough he could make that drive safely. Yesterday they went out to find groceries only to discover the line at the nearest HEB wrapped around the entire building and complex! They were fortunate to find another store with a shorter line and got what they needed. We are headed back to Austin today as it looks like the worst of the cold temps are now over after last night. Feeling pretty damn fortunate that we were all able to remain safe and warm this week.
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