The Southwest Power Pool, a transmission operator that oversees the power grid serving 14 states from the Canadian border southward, warned Monday about the possibility of rolling blackouts in the midst of historic cold gripping the Great Plains corridor from Nebraska all the way down to extreme southern Texas. Monday morning saw beaches in Galveston snow covered and even the border city of McAllen, Texas under a winter storm warning as the Lone Star State dealt with snow and sub-zero temperatures more commonly associated with the upper Midwest. Noting a 'really historic event', Governor Greg Abbott had already made a disaster declamation for all 254 Texas counties earlier in the weekend. The city of Dallas set a record for the lowest high temperature ever at 14 degrees. The Dallas-Fort Worth area also expects 3-5 additional inches of snow on Tuesday.
The conditions and possibility of blackouts forced the NHL's Dallas Stars to postpone its scheduled Monday home game.