'Lessons learned': Austin Energy, outage map prepared for cold-weather storms

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- While the risk for power outages hasn't reached the same risk level we saw during the ice storm in 2023, many people - like Alyssa Onyx in northwest Austin - don't want to take any chances.

"I think of that time often," she said. ""I think of that time often," she said. "It was desolate, it was quiet, there was no power. And then anger. Anger at literally being left in the dark and the cold."

When she heard this week's weather forecast, she said she started preparing.

"Blankets and towels for the windows. Made sure our little generator was working," she said.

The below poll conducted on the social media platform "X" shows most folks around town have at least some level of concern about an imminent power outage.

Matt Mitchell with Austin Energy said planning in advance - even the slightest - "can save a great amount of anxiety and stress."

He encourages people to have a backup plan when it comes to a place to a stay, and prepare an emergency kit with things, like flashlights, portable charges, blankets, water and food.

Portable phone chargers will come in handy, in particular, when it comes to both reporting and getting alerts about the timeline of outages and restoration, Mitchell said.

"We're going to be alerting you as to that outage, the duration, what we expect the time of restoration to be," he said.

In 2023, people across the city went without power for days, some bordering on weeks. Austin Energy said that was due to iced-over tree limbs continuously falling on power lines and issues with the outage map. Crews trimmed additional trees ahead of this week, and Mitchell said the outage map and website are revamped.

"We've upgraded our outage map to make sure it can handle the additional traffic. That's one of the things we learned in 2023, everybody went to the outage map and it couldn't handle the capacity of requests for people to report and say, 'hey I have an outage,'" he said.

Mitchell encourages people to follow Austin Energy's social media pages to get updates as storms roll in.