Texas Power Operator's Cold Weather Warning Sparks Flood of Memes

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) on Wednesday warned Texans of incoming cold weather, sparking a flood of memes and sarcastic comments in response.

An arctic blast will plunge most of the United States into "dangerously cold" territory beginning this weekend, according to a report by AccuWeather, with concerningly cold temperatures eventually stretching as far south as Texas. A map by the National Weather Service (NWS) revealed that when wind chill is taken into account, the Dallas area can expect outdoor temperatures to feel as cold as minus 10 degrees. Farther south, the Houston area could feel as cold as 15 degrees.

The incoming cold is a cause for concern, considering Texas suffered a massive power grid failure in February 2021 after three severe winter storms and frigid temperatures stressed the grid. Millions of Texans lost power, limiting their access to food, water and warmth. The failure proved fatal, and hundreds died because of the outage.

Since the 2021 power grid failure, other uncharacteristic storms have hit the Lone Star State, but none have threatened the grid to the same extent. However, Texans are still hesitant to trust the grid's reliability amid extremely cold weather. ERCOT issued a weather watch for early next week regarding the incoming arctic blast in a post to X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday afternoon.

"ERCOT has issued a Weather Watch from January 15–17 due to forecasted extreme cold weather across the ERCOT region, higher electrical demand, and the potential for lower reserves," the post said.

A spokesperson told Newsweek that ERCOT is "closely monitoring the weather conditions moving across Texas this and next week."

"Grid conditions are expected to be normal," the spokesperson said.

Despite ERCOT's assurance that the grid would be able to handle the demand, many social media users responded to the post with memes criticizing the organization.

"ERCOT when they tweet 'Grid conditions are expected to be normal'," one user posted accompanied by a popular meme of actor Jordan Peele sweating profusely during a Key and Peele comedy sketch.

"Here we go again," another user posted, this time including a meme of actor Dan Levy portraying the fictional character of David Rose from Schitt's Creek, with text at the bottom of the meme reading, "unbelievable."

"ERCOT when the weather isn't 70 degrees with no wind," one user posted with a video of a man screaming and sobbing.

Others criticized ERCOT but refrained from using memes to express their distrust.

"Y'all stressed as hell," one user posted.

"I don't believe you. Still traumatized from 3 years ago," another added.

ERCOT's six-day forecast shows power demand growing closest to the grid's capacity on January 16, in which 87,900 megawatts of energy will be available. Demand is expected to be at 79,736 megawatts during that time.