Recently, Texas has been experiencing their coldest temperatures since 1989. In fact, President Joe Biden declared Texas a major disaster area. In the past, Texas chose to have its own power grid that is separate from the rest of the country. This has allowed them to avoid federal regulations on their power plants. While these deregulations might have been beneficial in the short term, they have had detrimental consequences in the long run. Texas power plants were not required to prepare their equipment for extreme weather conditions, including the cold. This made their machinery vulnerable to the low temperatures they are experiencing, causing their equipment to fail. As a result, they were unable to provide enough electricity to their customers in Texas. This left people freezing in their homes with nowhere to go. 

Besides being cold, this power failure has had other effects on the people of Texas. This includes pipes bursting in people’s homes and limited items in the grocery stores. The cold temperatures have caused the water in pipes to freeze. Then, because it is frozen, the water expands inside the pipes and ultimately, the pipes break open. This is causing floods in many people’s homes. Also, as people tend to do in snow storms, the people of Texas emptied the shelves in stores. Now, supermarkets are low on items to restock their shelves with. This has caused the stores to put limits on items such as water, eggs, and milk. Even though all these terrible things are happening to the people of Texas, not everyone stuck around to suffer. Senator Ted Cruz flew with his family to Cancun. He said that he only went to drop his family off there and come back to Texas. However, many people are still upset that he left the state. It has been a rough week for Texans, but it seems like their weather is getting back on track.