Storm chaser Aaron Jayjack reported live from Texas on Jan. 20, showing how the region is preparing for snow, ice and bitter cold.
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00:00Aaron, you spend a lot of time thousands of miles in cold snow and ice farther north.
00:05This is a big deal there in the Gulf Coast region.
00:13Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is normally chasing hurricanes here in the warm weather,
00:18the warm Gulf. You know, even in the winter, usually having that warm weather. And right now,
00:22it feels like winter here in Houston. It feels like the northern plains almost. We've got wind,
00:27we've got cold. And more importantly, we have a winter storm warning that's going to go into
00:32effect here in the next hour or two, 6pm Central Time here in Houston. With this major winter
00:37storm that's going to come across the I-10 corridor, the Gulf of Mexico, this Gulf Coast
00:43region, seeing a storm that they're not usually used to. You know, this is a rare event where we
00:47could possibly see four inches of snow or even more here in areas of the downtown Houston. The
00:53I-10 corridor is expected to be crippled. You know, this is a major artery that allows people,
00:58travelers, truckers, to travel from the west coast to the east coast, from California all the way to
01:02Jacksonville, Florida. And it is going to likely be shut down tomorrow from San Antonio points to
01:08the east through Houston, New Orleans. All this area is expected snow and besides the snow leading
01:15up to the snow, likely freezing rain, sleet, all the wintery mixes are going to be going on here
01:20in the I-10 corridor. Tomorrow is a day you're not going to want to be out on the roads. You're
01:25going to want to be hunkered down, staying indoors. You know, they've been prepping here in Houston,
01:29lots of salt being dropped on the sidewalk here in front of businesses. Not a lot going on in
01:34downtown except we're in front of the Toyota Center where they did have a basketball game
01:38today, this afternoon, squeezing one last event in before people, folks here in Houston are likely
01:44shut down and locked inside their homes trying to stay warm for the next couple of days.
01:48Erin, I see the wind there blowing the flags. How's it feeling out there? Are you already
01:52feeling, you know, the chill, kind of the wind making things worse?
02:00You know, definitely it's cold. You know, I actually, I came from, I flew out of Bismarck,
02:05North Dakota this morning where we had negative 20 Fahrenheit. So we're just a few degrees above
02:09freezing. It actually feels kind of warm to me, but lots of people here are hunkered down wearing
02:15their winter clothes that they probably don't wear very often. But it is windy. It's still cold
02:20here for me, just not like what I experienced way up north earlier this morning. But like I said,
02:25you know, this is going to be a dangerous situation. Besides the roads being bad,
02:29the cold weather is going to cause a lot of problems, especially, you know, there's a large
02:33homeless population here down in the southern part of the United States, especially here in Houston.
02:38They're going to want to get into shelters tonight. You're not going to want to be out,
02:42not going to be out driving for sure. It's going to be very bad driving conditions. You know,
02:46they are trying to treat the roads here. You can see the brine lines on the interstates as we drove
02:50around. So they're doing the best that they can, but they just don't have a lot of equipment down
02:54here to remove the snow. So they're going to be reliant on temperatures warming up, which may
02:58take a couple of days for those temperatures to warm up and then melt that snow, try and get
03:02things back to normal here. Maybe a mid to late week Thursday, maybe things aren't going to get
03:07back to normal here in the Houston area. And Aaron, you mentioned some of the ways that people
03:13are preparing there. You mentioned not a lot of people out and about right now. Have you gotten
03:17any sense from people there? Are they all, you know, have already made their trip to the store
03:21to stock up? Are people still doing that? What's your sense about how they're preparing?
03:30I actually, I was at Target earlier today and talked to the lady there that was working the
03:36register and she actually mentioned how it's been busy for four days. So this is a well-advertised
03:41storm. I think most people have gotten their preparations out of the way, stocked up on
03:45everything they're going to need days in advance. And now people are just waiting for this storm.
03:49You know, there's a, I know there's a hill nearby here. I saw online people talking about
03:53that might get some action with some sledding here tomorrow afternoon. So we'll probably go
03:57check that out tomorrow afternoon, see if people are going to come out and actually enjoy something.
04:02You know, there's probably plenty of people here in the Houston area that have never experienced
04:06snow before. They're younger. They, you know, they've never had a snowstorm and this is going
04:10to be their first chance to experience snow. Get out, hit the, hit the hills here and go do some
04:15sledding. Hopefully, hopefully people have shovels here as well. I don't know if there's a lot of
04:19shovels. I've been looking around. We drove by Home Depot and I thought I might see some people
04:23walking out with shovels and I didn't see anybody walking out with shovels. So I just go to show that,
04:27you know, there isn't a lot of ways to be prepared here other than getting plenty of food and water.
04:32Getting, trying to stay warm and stay indoors and be prepared for power outages. You know, with this
04:37cold and with ice, you're going to have one, the grid being impacted from people trying to heat
04:42their homes. So it's going to put some stress on the grid and then you potentially are going to
04:46have ice problems or potentially bring down trees, bring down power lines. So hopefully we don't lose
04:51power here. You know, we just, they just dealt with power outages here in Houston this summer
04:56with the hurricane that came through. I believe it was Beryl came through this summer in June,
04:59caused a lot of problems here in Houston. Well, hopefully we don't have a repeat of
05:03that because at least in June it was warm. You could deal with the, with the power outages a
05:08little bit better. But now in the winter with no heat, you're, you know, power outages can be
05:13really dangerous situation or deadly even if it gets cold enough and the power stays out long
05:18enough. Yeah. Some great advice there from storm chaser, Aaron Jayjack. Thank you for that update.