The Texas Cold Snap
The image above may not look like much, but trust me when I say it’s freaky to meteorologists. The purple emerging from the north is cold weather appeared The Day After Tomorrow-like as it descended through Texas in mid-February. Usually, this satellite band detects levels of cold only regularly seen in clouds. But the ground in Texas got so cold, so fast, that it tricked the satellite. The cold snap iced up fossil fuel infrastructure and led to power outages that killed hundreds. Yet conservative lawmakers have continued to push the lie that wind power caused the outage, all in an effort to keep fossil fuels afloat. That could leave the grid exposed to another cold snap—or, even more worryingly, a hot one.
