Saturday, February 15 dawned to a layer of ice on the bayside grass, which would soon turn brown. Pelicans and gulls and other coastal birds may have found protection out on the barrier islands. The cold stunned the fish, but it would be a day before their carcasses would begin piling up.
Note: We came to the coast to experience the Gulf warmth, but for a few days, we had a taste of northern plains winter. For the northerners spending the winter here, the cold was an annoyance. We’ve seen cold snaps come and go. For Texans and residents of other southern states, it was a nightmare. It was a deadly weather event, and the widespread property damage has been described as greater than any hurricane. With spring at our door, we take a look back.
A vacation to remember
For the week following the Big Freeze of mid-February, a TV forecaster out of Corpus Christi kept assuring viewers: "There is a zero chance of another polar vortex cold spell will come pouring out of Canada this spring."
You can’t blame him. Just a week earlier, iced-up bridges stopped carrying traffic into Corpus Christi overnight.
That icing event was just the beginning of headaches that are still unfolding as Texans and other southerners cope with repairs to their homes from burst water lines.
Around us, the drab green shrub of the coastal plains was turned to a golden fall color with the freeze. Green grass turned brown, and palm fronds drooped before they also took on a brown appearance. The historic cold that lasted eight days killed millions of fish in the shallow coastal waters.
But let’s start from the beginning:
We awaited January 31 with great anticipation. That was the day we grabbed a hotel room and picked up our daughter Maya at San Antonio International Airport for a three-week visit and vacation. Maya had earned a break, finishing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with two degrees, and if that wasn’t enough, Maya finished major projects while rehabbing a repaired knee, during a pandemic, no less.
We stayed another night in San Antonio so we could visit the Alamo, the River Walk, have a dessert on top of the Tower of the Americas (and watch the moon rise) and then spend a few hours exploring the Mission San Jose before heading for the coast.
We envisioned a non-stop vacation for Maya, some time for trips to the beach and museums (if they were open) and wildlife refuges, but alas, Maya had a grad school application to complete.
It turned out that we would be just fine having our kid around, and there’s only so much driving around and gawking that you want to do. We occasionally pried the computer from Maya's hands for an outing, and we knew that we still had a week before the deadline. This was the longest Maya was in our house since graduation from high school five years ago, so we simply enjoyed our time together.
Maya’s visit wasn’t all work and no play. A few days before the freeze hit, we had scheduled a couple days in a beachfront condo on Padre Island’s north end. Heavy fog, flowing onshore and feeding the developing storm, meant we didn’t have to worry about sun burns. A day at the beach, even if it’s foggy, is still a day among the surf and the shore birds. We returned on Wednesday so Maya could complete the application. I enjoyed about an hour of bayside sun and watched the weather begin to turn.
Then, the Big Freeze rolled in. The entire state of Texas was initially in a winter storm warning, and though typically snow is greeted here as a curiosity, Winter Storm Uri was one for the history books. A couple days before the freeze hit, the RV park managers put out the alert: Water service would be turned off as the cold set in Friday night.
So we and our neighbors prepared and hoped the forecast of 20 degrees was wrong. The area, including Corpus Christi, came to a standstill that Saturday night as the icy grip took hold.
We were fine, we thought, when the power went out. We still had our propane furnace and a full tank of fresh water, and since the furnace heats the underbelly and our pipes, we’d get by until it warmed up.
Our assumptions were wrong. The furnace couldn’t keep lines from freezing up, and then came another problem. Our battery couldn’t keep the furnace going for an extended period. When Sunday night rolled around, our neighbor Ralph knocked on the door, and within minutes we had a cord running from a roaring generator through a cracked window to our little floor heater.
The heater got us through the night and the sun emerged on Sunday. The news was mixed. The temperature climbed just above freezing, but the utility managers would use rolling blackouts to save the grid. Our local roads were thawed out, so the rush began for supplies, gasoline and generators. Angie briefly shopped for a generator, but another option surfaced: Let’s drive to a motel. There was no telling when water service would be restored.
I tried to stay positive and to not doom scroll on my phone to see how bad the crisis was.
Since we were leaving, I had to empty the trash. In my haste, I forgot about the ice on our shaded steps. In a split second, I was horizontal and airborne. I caught the side frames of the steps with my arms. I flopped like a rag doll, and the back of my head caught the top step. I was blessed, apparently, with a hard skull. I was a little sore for a few days, but there are no signs that the fall knocked any sense into me.
We packed up and drove 90 miles north to the Holiday Inn Express in Cuero. The highway through the coastal lowlands was lined with stripes of snow. The small town was on the edge of the heavier snowfall, and we found a slushy parking lot when we arrived.
The countryside of south Texas wears a drab green coat all winter, but record cold and snowfall took its toll on the vegetation. Temperatures rose Tuesday night, but another band of snow moved in as we headed south to the coast.
Thanks to the periodic outages, the hotel’s emergency lights flashed for the next couple days. Before our third-floor, 55-degree room could warm up, the first outage hit, so we bundled up, expecting that it could be hours before we had a working furnace in the room. When the lights and heat kicked on after 45 minutes, we felt better about our decision. We realized that it wasn't too smart to use the elevator, so we got our stairclimbing in.
We couldn’t complain. Residents of San Antonio were scrambling for water and propane heat and generators while their water lines - not insulated for sub-zero temperatures - burst from the extended cold.
Other cities – Dallas and Fort Worth, Austin and Houston had similar disasters. Meanwhile, we ordered takeout from the local Mexican restaurant and prepared to head back south on Wednesday. The hotel lobby was full of storm refugees, waiting for their water lines to be repaired or their power to be restored.
Maya and I ventured out to gas up the pickup and we couldn't resist a tour of the town. We started at the Dewitt County Courthouse, a grand structure ringed with barriers for ongoing foundation work. Then we drifted to the backstreets and found the Daule School, the town’s all black school until integration in 1965. Across the city, the massive live oaks, some occupying the middle of the street, reminded us that we were still in the south Texas climate.
We rode out the periodic outages until we left before noon Wednesday. Temperatures climbed to the high 30s as we went south, but the north wind reminded us of the icy grip on the northern plains. At the RV park, the power was restored, but the Rockport water situation was not yet resolved. Maya and I headed for Rockport on a laundry run, but found most of the business district was without power.
We salvaged the afternoon with a trip across the Aransas Bay bridge to the little town of Lamar and Goose Island State Park, home to the 900-year-old Big Tree, plus the seasonal home for a couple of whooping cranes. When you’re in the presence of a giant ancient tree, it lends a little perspective to your weeks or days of difficulties.
Returning to the bay, we hooked up the water and crossed our fingers that our water lines weren’t cracked. To our relief, we didn’t have water running out of the camper belly.
Here it was, a day before Maya’s flight home, and we were almost back to normal. A sunny day greeted us in Corpus Christi on Saturday as we gave Maya a look around at the waterfront, had our first taste of Wienerschnitzel hotdogs, and then headed to the Padre Island National Seashore for a short glimpse of an undeveloped seashore. On the way home, we stopped in Port Aransas for a swing through the beach shops for Maya’s souvenir haul.
At 4 a.m. Sunday, Maya and I headed for San Antonio to catch a 9 a.m. flight. Maya arrived in Denver to find the adventure wasn’t over. The Omaha flight had been canceled for another snowstorm, so Maya grabbed a flight to Kansas City, where big sister Jana shuttled Maya up I-29 for a waiting ride home.
The outward appearances were deceiving. The effects of the cold were much more broad and long lasting, even on the coast where the temperatures were milder. On one of my walks before Maya left, I found the game wardens hanging a poster: No harvesting of cold-stunned fish was allowed in the bays and harbors.
Soon, we would see stunned and dead fish floating by in the bay, and thousands of fish drifted into the calm ends of the bay’s residential areas next door. The end of one canal was blanketed with dead fish for about 60 yards, and the stench began wafting inland with the wind.
A couple days passed before we saw the removal process begin. Local residents, who have their bay boats moored behind their houses on the canals, used a net they rigged like a plow to remove the seaweed that drifts in in the summer. Once the fish were pushed to the bay, the crew cleared the dead fish from the net, and the carcasses drifted with the wind. By the end of a day, thousands were enmeshed with the washed up seaweed on the shore next to the park. It's going to be a smelly couple of weeks downwind.
Thousands of dead fish, mostly mullet, were blown into the ends of the residential coves. Contractors and local residents sprang into action as the mass of dead fish began to create a toxic situation for the surrounding area.
The fishing and sporting community is still sorting out what the massive loss, likely millions of fish and shrimp, will mean to the coast. Many anglers regularly release what they catch, but it will be interesting to see how long the fishery on the coast takes to recover.
A neighbor scooped up this speckled trout as it floated by the bay wall . It was likely hours from death. Beaches and bay fronts across the Gulf Coast were littered with dead fish in the days and weeks after the freeze.
The Big Freeze is a fading memory. Our neighbor Ralph, who works as a landscaper for a nearby resort, says some of the palms will survive the frost damage, while others will die. By the time those questions are answered, we’ll be driving back north to greet the spring.
The freeze on the coast changed the color of the countryside, including the neighboring development. The ice turned the grass brown and quickly wilted the palm fronds. While some palms were heavily damaged, others held up better to the hours of subfreezing conditions.
We’re ready for the warmup, and for continued progress on this pandemic. Be safe everyone, and help out your neighbor whenever you can. We’re all in this together.
Until next time.
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