Power came back tonight in North Texas after being off for four days during a week of sub-freezing weather - Tuesday overnight it was below zero. I think I got a screenshot of -1 on my weather app.

The house got down to the high-40s, but after Richard Bridge sent a tip about using candles and terracotta pots (and as a gardener I have a lot of those pots!) I set up six of those stations around the house. I used jar candles to prevent wax spills or anything tipping over, and was able to keep the indoor temperature at around 50^o. Many people were a lot colder in their houses. To keep us all warm (myself and three dogs) I moved clothes out of the closet and dug out backpacking gear. I made a stack of inflatable "Thermarest" pads for me and left one for the dogs and built a pallet for them that was beside mine. The first night they were a bit puzzled and we made a couple of trips out during the night, but Tuesday and Wednesday night they had caught on and were perfectly content to sleep in there with me. There has been snow on the ground since Sunday, but with temperatures so cold, it stuck around. Hopefully it will melt by the weekend (and then comes the mud). We're still being careful about using much power; I'm going to wait to do any laundry until it's warm again (this weekend).

I had to throw out a lot of food from the fridge and the frozen vegetables in there were all sodden. There is meat that defrosted but was always cold and that will get cooked tomorrow and either frozen as part of other dishes or eaten this week.

Stores are going to be empty for a while because they lost power and will be tossing all of the defrosted and warm food; everyone who has food left in their houses needs to keep eating it for a while until the marketplace catches up with the demand of millions of households that had to throw out a lot of food all at once.

We don't have a boil order here (so far) but in places where there was so much demand (because of water main breaks or because millions of people had water dripping) the water pressure dropped and they safety of the supply couldn't be guaranteed. I have four large stock pots filled with water in the kitchen (so if the order comes I have good water to use for the day or more it takes to test and certify the water safe again.