Winter Weather Alert - Mark Keough County Judge - Entergy Update - 8:00 am, 2/16

The Woodlands, TX - Just finished up a call with Entergy. They continue to work on restoring power generation. One plant is nearly to 100%. The larger and newer plant is not fully restored and they continue to work on getting it back to full load.

Overnight Entergy found several customers, more than 45,000 in Montgomery County who locally have some frozen service equipment and sub stations that will not come online when the rolling power program cycles on. Entergy is working with crews in the field to correct and work on these localized problems.

Until generation is back to 100% output rolling outages will continue. I was told if you have had power restored and then it went off you are in the rolling outage program to ensure as many customers as they can energize receive power in blocks. Those rolling on and off power will continue. If you did not receive any restoration yesterday or overnight you are likely in a service area that has malfunctioning equipment locally at the neighborhood level that will need to be worked on today. Entergy has crews in the field working on the list of distribution issues but there was no timeline for completion given this morning.

Summary: Two things still affecting restoring power to all customers. 1) power generation is still reduce due to catastrophic failure of the generators. Restoration is ongoing but not back to 100% yet. 2) Entergy attempted to turn power back on under the rolling program and some areas (45,000) customers approximately were unsuccessful due to local equipment malfunctions. Entergy crews are in the field working on those malfunctions.

I will be following up with Entergy throughout the day and bring updates as I get them.
Weather update: Later this evening we are expected to receive another front which will bring additional rain/freezing rain as temperatures fall tonight. This will make roadways overnight and into tomorrow dangerous to travel on. With the current ice and snow on the roads there will be limited treatments available to help mitigate further icing. Please use caution on all roadways today, avoid unnecessary travel and overnight tonight into tomorrow avoid traveling until temperatures rise above freezing.