Picture this: It’s a Thursday night in Houston and thunderstorms are rolling in. Suddenly, winds roar past 100 mph. Trees snap, windows shatter and the city darkens as power flickers out.

Even after it’s over, it takes days for the lights to come back on in parts of the city.

A week and a half later, the Tuesday morning commute is just getting underway in Dallas. Thunderstorms rush through the city, unleashing hurricane-strength wind gusts and torrential rain. Trees and power lines topple to the ground, cutting power to hundreds of thousands of people. Many homes and businesses remain without power days later.

That’s exactly the scenario that played out in Texas over the past few weeks, and these kinds of outages are happening more frequently as destructive extreme weather thrashes the aging electric grid.

Read more at the link in our bio.

📸: Kaylee Greenlee Beal/Reuters