City and county officials are urging Austinites to hunker down as a potentially dangerous cold front bears down on Texas.
Travis County Judge Andy Brown issued a disaster declaration today in anticipation of the forecasted severe winter weather.
Brown, along with Austin Mayor Kirk Watson and other local officials will hold a news conference this morning to provide updates ahead of the storm that will bring freezing temperatures to Central Texas over the weekend.
The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning that starts Saturday at 6 a.m. and lasts until Sunday at noon. The service expects the massive cold front to roll into Texas tonight.
Temperatures in Austin are expected to reach freezing tomorrow afternoon, and some stretches of Central Texas and the Hill Country could see a glaze of ice as a result of freezing rain or sleet coming in along with that front.
Freezing temperatures will last through at least Monday evening, when we will get just above freezing briefly before another overnight freeze. Temperatures are expected to get above freezing Tuesday morning.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of emergency in more than 130 counties, and ERCOT, the state's electric grid operator, said it expects a peak in demand for electricity over the whole state, but it does not expect shortages, like in 2021.
Austin Energy said it's prepared for the weather and that all staff are available to respond to any storm-related outages. The utility said it doesn't expect to see large scale power outages from downed tree limbs like it did in 2023, when hundreds of thousands of Austinites were left without power for days.
You can watch the news conference starting at 10:30 a.m.
