Remember the 2021 freeze? Officials say conditions this year bear a resemblance.

While the National Weather Service Brownsville/Rio Grande Valley station outlook for December through February predicts a warmer and drier than normal winter season for South Texas, it also includes the potential for one or more “Arctic express” style cold fronts.

This week, Electric Reliability Council of Texas board members were informed that conditions going into this winter season bear a resemblance to winter 2020-2021, when Winter Storm Uri swept across the entire state in February, resulting in widespread, often lengthy power outages, which resulted in the deaths of 246 Texas residents.

“This year has been very similar to that,” ERCOT Operational Forecasting Supervisor Chris Coleman said during the Dec. 3 board meeting in Austin. “Now that doesn’t mean we’re going to have another event like 2021, but it does suggest we’re in a pattern that could support something similar this winter.”

Several young citrus trees are seen covered with a light mesh and roots have a water drip to protect them from cold weather on Thursday, Jan. 20, 2021, in Hargill. (Delcia Lopez | dlopez@themonitor.com)

Those conditions include similar atmospheric patterns, ocean temperatures and soil moisture, he said, noting that there is “more support than average” for extreme cold this winter, most likely in mid- to late winter.

NWS meteorologists, in the latest outlook, cited a 30-40% chance that one or more cold systems could surge from Canada across the Great Plains into northern Mexico, such as what the Valley experienced in mid-January this year and late December 2022. The biggest chance for such an event this winter is between Dec. 20, 2024, and Feb. 15, 2025, according to the NWS.

ERCOT’s worst-case scenario — a repeat of February 2021 — predicts an 80% chance of rolling blackouts across the state. That chance falls to 50% with a repeat of December 2022.

While extreme cold is a possibility for Texas this winter, the grid is in a position to handle it, having added 10,000 megawatts of new generating capacity just since last winter, according to ERCOT, which operates the 90% of the state’s grid that is deregulated, serving more than 27 million customers. Its market includes parts of the Valley.

In addition to added capacity, ERCOT has conducted nearly 3,000 inspections of the grid since February 2021, according to the organization.

All the same, Texas is still facing a “slightly higher reliable risk probability” heading into winter, according to ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas.

Utility workers fix electrical lines as temperatures fall into the 40 and the 30’s in parts of the Rio Grande Valley on Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022, in San Juan. (Joel Martinez | jmartinez@themonitor.com)

“That is being driven by the increased loan on the system that we’re seeing,” he said.

Much of the generating capacity that’s been added to the grid comes from solar power, which is not very useful during the winter peak hours of early mornings and evenings, when the sun is down, Vegas said, adding that battery storage capacity also suffers during extreme cold. On the plus side, weatherization efforts have helped make for a more robust grid going into winter, he said.

Coleman said extreme cold events have been more frequent in recent years in Texas despite warmer-than-normal temperatures, noting that 2023 and 2024 will probably go down as the state’s hottest years on record.

“You can have a warm winter in Texas and have a cold extreme, and that’s becoming more frequent,” he said. “Five of the last eight winters, we’ve had temperatures that met those thresholds.”

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