What’s the power outlook in Texoma? We asked the experts

TEXOMA (KXII) — Most of Texoma has maintained power through the winter storm, and experts are confident it will stay that way through the rest of the weather event.

While there are some pockets of outages around the region, particularly in the Lamar County area near Paris, the power grid has largely withstood the ice and cold temperatures.

One of the big concerns going into the weekend’s winter storm was freezing rain weighing down power lines.

“A half inch of ice can come out to 500 to 800 pounds of weight on those wires,” said David McGinnis, CEO of Grayson-Collin Electric Cooperative. “If the lines weigh themselves down, the wood poles can break under stress.”

While there is some ice on the lines, McGinnis said it hasn’t been enough to cause major problems, and right now, the biggest worry doesn’t have to do with the lines at all.

He’s most concerned about drivers slipping and sliding on icy roads and crashing into power poles.

“I’ve already heard from TxDOT in one of our industry update calls, several thousand people are out in Dallas because of a crash with a power pole,” McGinnis said.

He said such crashes can cause significant problems.

“If you’re on icy roads and you hit a pole, it endangers not only yourself, but others,” McGinnis said.

Even though the region is facing near-record low temperatures in the coming days, McGinnis said their preparation has the system ready to operate down to -25 degrees.

“I’m an optimist by nature, so I feel good,” he said. “It will strain it, but hopefully our engineers and our planning has done well and we’ll be able to handle it.”

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