Winter caused 41% of the deaths on record here, but it's only 3% of the events.

Harris County has 486 storm events on record since 2017, and wind and hail make up most of them, which is normal for this part of the Gulf Coast. But if you're watching for power-outage risk, event count isn't the number that matters. Winter weather shows up only 15 times in nine years, just 3 out of every 100 events, yet it killed 41 people. Almost all of those deaths happened on one night: the February 2021 freeze. Heat killed another 12 people, spread across ten hot weeks in 2023. Neither hazard had to be common to be the one that mattered most.

Figure 1

One February night caused four in ten deaths on record

486 events since April 2017, colored by hazard type. Winter and heat barely register against all the wind and hail. Look at where the deaths actually happened.

Figure 2 · same time axis as above

Most wind gusts barely clear the bar for a warning

163 measured wind reports. Most sit at 50 to 56 knots, right at the minimum needed to trigger a severe warning. A handful go much higher, and those are the gusts that actually snap poles.

Figure 3

Heat and winter sit at opposite ends of the year, and both stress the grid

Wind and hail peak in spring. Heat runs June through September. Winter almost always hits in January or February. Those are the two stretches when Harris County's grid is under the most strain.

Figure 4

One flood report accounts for 97% of nine years of damage

Flood damage totals $10.2 billion of the county's $10.32 billion on file, and $10.0 billion of that is a single Harvey-night report for Joyce. Every other year combined adds up to about $321 million.