Icepocalypse 2021
WANT TO LISTEN TO ME NARRATE THIS ESSAY...
Mother Nature has it in for someone in Houston. I don’t think it’s me personally, but that may change since I’m about to call her out.
A little background, I grew up in the land of frozen windshields and lock de-icers in a beautiful but frequently frigid state named Michigan. For awhile, I’ve secretly suspected that the reason MI is shaped like a mitten is because it doesn’t want to lose any fingers to frostbite.
For those outside the North, let me describe the scope of the problem. In 1995, we had to turn on the heat in September and didn’t get to turn it off until May, which in case you’re too lazy to do math—and let’s face it who isn’t most of the time—that’s 3/4 of the year. I was personally affronted by winter’s selfish monopoly of the calendar. And yeah, I held a grudge about it.
From childhood, I’ve never felt at home in the cold. Looking back, I guess with my imagination I really shoulda considered whether I might be like a changeling from the summer fae. But barring a faery switch, it could also have been a human thing. 3 of my 4 grandparents are from warm climates, two were Tennessee natives and one was a Mediterranean islander. Did this heritage lead to a love of swimming and suntans and a disdain for snow shovels? Perhaps. Because each year, the warning “Winter is Coming” filled me with as much dread as a Game of Thrones character.
Fast forward to my adult life when I began looking for jobs after residency. Remembering my longstanding frustration with deep freezes and fresh off a pair of bad winters, I only looked for positions in the South. I believed Texas, as far down as I could get and still be in the United States, would be far enough to avoid snowstorms. People warned me that it would be too hot. Better than a windchill of 7 any day, I thought. I’m going.
Houston lived up to its sultry reputation, with 3 solid months a year with temperatures in the mid-90s. June through August, it’s 95, 94, 96 pretty much every day. Houstonians know what to expect. If I’m being honest, when I walk outside in August it leaves me feeling like I’m scaling Mount Doom like a hobbit with a ring to get rid of. So in summer, I’m not ambitious enough to take quests. If it’s noon, I’m driving my car to the mailbox, not walking. I also use the scorching heat as a good excuse to drink iced anything, including frozen margaritas.
After my move to Texas, I soon learned that just as MI could have three-quarters of the year requiring heat, Texas could require air conditioning 3/4 of the year. Eighty degrees in November is not uncommon, and I’ve been like… okay, I’m here for this. AC or bust. Yes, ma’am, Mother Nature, go on with your blistering sunshine, I’m putting on SPF 30 right now.
Mother Nature, as you may have noticed, is not here to make friends. She’s not. Nobody on the planet gets an uninterrupted Happy Hour with calypso music playing in the background. So soon after arriving in Houston, the Gulf Coast acquainted me with tropical storms and hurricanes. There was legit flooding where people perished and others—the Make Lemonade types—kayaked down the freeway the morning after. It was insane, but so are ten-inch snow drifts, so I’m like, ok, here to stay.
Over the years, I soldiered through rounds of power outages and bizarre flooding, and I refused to break down into any hurricane hysteria. Like a native, I’ve developed a hurricane prep routine, which involves filling my gas tank, filling my bath tub, and stocking up on Pop Tarts and canned food, bottled water, and margarita mix. After the “500-year flood” I considered myself a tropical storm veteran, not to be rattled by the occasional chaos of a Category 5.
As if to test my resolve, Hurricane Harvey brought the kind of epic flooding that made me wonder if Mother Nature was taking up mermaid pilates. Because I think we can all agree that 27 trillion gallons of rain is a bit much unless you’re God trying clear the planet for Noah and some animals. (By the way, I didn’t exaggerate when I said 27 trillion gallons. That’s the actual amount of rainfall during Harvey. Look it up.) Even so, I doubled down on my thinking: nope, not moving; I signed up for tropical weather, and, apparently, you don’t get palm trees without the occasional downpour of biblical proportions. Gotta deal with it. Maybe gonna need to add inflatable raft to my hurricane prep though. Hashtag, Harvey, the 1000-year flood, schooled me.
Then Mother Nature, perhaps seeing my defiant acceptance of freakish floods, decided to try a different strategy. In February 2021, while still in the midst of a pandemic and only 3 years post-Harvey, Houston experienced several days of overnight temperatures in the teens. Temps in the TEENS, people, in Texas. Wait, what?
Texas is not prepared for an ice storm of any duration, let alone multiple days of it. It became an Icepocalypse of burst pipes and crashing power grids. There were widespread waterless faucets and people burned old furniture to stay warm, getting carbon monoxide poisoning in the process. Jeeze. Cue the Armageddon opening credits, for real.
I was not only shocked. I felt betrayed. This was a clear violation of the agreement Houston and I forged years ago when I agreed to move here expressly to avoid snow and ice. Breach of contract, H Town. Full stop.
I’m not trying to say I had the worst time. I actually consider myself lucky. #1, I did not die. #2, in my house, the temperature only fell to 45 degrees, deflating my exercise ball like a balloon and forcing me to use citronella candles to warm my hands—a purpose for which a citronella candle was never intended—but otherwise I was all good. Still, on the scale of bewildered outrage, I was about an 8 most days. Houston is built on a swamp; mosquitos and West Nile virus are expected scourges. Indoor icicles are not.
Unlike friends who had pipes burst indoors, I had only one outdoor gushing water incident when a sprinkler spigot cracked and spewed water into a corner of my yard. After I took care of that, I decided to protect my exposed pipes, adopting a Zombie Apocalypse philosophy…Help is not coming. The plumbers are overwhelmed. Danger is coming, because we're about to have another night below 30 amidst rolling power and water outages. So I insulated my own pipes with a combination of old t-shirts, trash bags, and duct tape. Here’s what I can tell you about that…with enough duct tape, you can MacGyver through a lot of craziness. Keep a good supply of duct tape, people, no matter where you live.
As I type this, it’s 79 degrees, which is “March in Texas” behaving like March in Texas. So that’s awesome. But I’ll tell you one thing…I better not hear a peep out of my city during hurricane season this year. When you are brought to your knees by an ice disaster, you forfeit your right to call yourself a tropical climate that’s entitled to major hurricanes. And, as for you, Mother Nature…same, girl, same. You’ve had your meltdown for the year. Come fall, Drama Mama, walk on with your storm surges. Walk on.
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