CPS reports nearly 6K without power Sunday as temperatures drop

Thousands are without power Sunday night in San Antonio as temperatures approach freezing. CPS Energy reports 5,943 customers were without power, according to a tweet sent out at 8:36 p.m. The utility’s outage map shows 3,438 customers without power as of 8:54 p.m.

CPS is contending with eight outages per the map, while the tweet notes outages in the 78221, 78226, 78245, 78255, 78256, and 78264 zip codes. The outages are weather related and crews are addressing them throughout the night, according to the tweet.

“Today’s light rain has caused pole fires due to ‘tracking,’ a reaction when rain/humidity mixes with dust/dirt buildup on equipment leading electricity to ‘track over,'” a CPS tweet reads.

In an earlier tweet posted on Sunday, CPS recommends checking trees to help reduce the risk of falling branches that can knock out power lines. Freezing water can add additional weight to such branches and cause them to snap. Such incidents previously caused large outages in Austin.

Texas avoided a repeat of 2021 Snowpocalypse in recent days and the prevalent concern of outages. Freezing temperatures challenged the Texas power grid this month, but it held up and prevented a repeat of the devastating outages two years prior.