The entire community of Montecito, Calif., and surrounding canyons were ordered to evacuate Monday amid a deluge of rain that has flooded roads and swollen waterways.
As millions of Texans struggle with bitter cold temperatures and power outages, some may be reminded of the rolling blackouts Californians saw last summer when the region was hit with triple-digit temperatures.
It s as if the situation is playing out in reverse: while some states struggle when temperatures soar, others struggle when they plummet. It is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of event, but to some extent, it was predictable, said Sadrul Ula, a faculty researcher with UC Riverside s Center for Environmental Research and Technology.
Ula said that just like the power infrastructure in California isn t built to deal with abnormal situations in the energy market, the same is true in Texas. He said part of the problem is that it s just not cost effective for the industry to deal with these kinds of emergencies.