{"id":135234,"date":"2026-01-23T16:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T16:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/135234\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T16:17:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T16:17:17","slug":"austin-area-prepares-for-winter-weather-and-potential-freezing-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/135234\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin area prepares for winter weather and potential freezing rain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>City and county officials are urging Austinites to hunker down as a potentially dangerous cold front bears down on Texas.<\/p>\n<p>Travis County Judge Andy Brown issued a disaster declaration today in anticipation of the forecasted severe winter weather.<\/p>\n<p>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. <\/p>\n<p>The National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning that starts Saturday at midnight and lasts until Sunday morning. The service expects the massive cold front to roll into Texas tonight. <\/p>\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/NWSSanAntonio\/status\/2014452873367601554\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">rain or sleet coming<\/a> in along with that front.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of emergency in more than 130 counties, and ERCOT, the state&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Austin Energy said it&#8217;s prepared for the weather and that all staff are available to respond to any storm-related outages. The utility said it doesn&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>You can watch the news conference starting at 10:30 a.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City and county officials are urging Austinites to hunker down as a potentially dangerous cold front bears down&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135235,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,15959,57682,134,133,57683,57684,57685,4936,3413,12264,10799,56609],"class_list":{"0":"post-135234","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-energy","10":"tag-austin-energy-grid","11":"tag-austin-headlines","12":"tag-austin-news","13":"tag-austin-power-outages","14":"tag-austin-winter-storm","15":"tag-austin-winter-weather","16":"tag-cold-front","17":"tag-ercot","18":"tag-freezing-rain","19":"tag-freezing-temperatures","20":"tag-icy-roads"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}