A life threatening storm will cover some 40 states, 235 million Americans, and track some 2,300 miles from Texas to Maine. The storm will combine sub-zero temperatures with large amounts of snow and accumulations of ice, depending on where you live. The storm could crash our power grid when factors of reliability and capacity are considered according to energy expert Colonel Rob Maness. He is the host of the Rob Maness show.
Col. Rob Maness was a guest this week on Natali and Clayton Morris’ Redacted podcast. Redacted is an independent information platform, unencumbered by external factors or restrictive policies, bring quality information, balanced reporting, constructive debate, and thoughtful narratives.
What was most interesting about Col. Maness’ appearance with Morris was his highlights of potential problems he sees coming with this storm because of actions taken by Biden during his administration, actions which will come as news to many. His observations are based on recent weather report models that indicate the south could see up 1 to 3 inches of ice while other parts of the south and northeast could get 4 to 12 inches of snow.
Col. Maness indicated that because of recent climate concerns legislation a number of changes have been made to the power grid which will make it vulnerable in such a storm. Some of those changes Maness highlighted are as follows:
- Reliable electric generating coal plants have been taken out of service.
- Electric generating coal plants were replaced with cleaner burning natural gas plants.
- The move from coal to gas is depleting our natural gas supply and thus the pressure in the pipelines and thus the reliability of our power grid.
- Solar panel farms have been added all over the U.S. They fail to function under ice and snow.
- Wind turbine farms have been added all over the U.S. They fail to function without wind and can be broken with ice buildups.
- Nuclear generating plants were deemphasized under the Biden administration.
- The power grid is digital and vulnerable to internet hackers.
A portion of what Col. Maness had to say was as follows, “Look, I’ve been warning about this, especially in regards to Texas since I was a wing commander at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In the winter of 2011 we had a devastating storm like what you’re about to see here. And Texas was not able to generate enough natural gas for heat in its state. So they cut the pipeline off to states like New Mexico, which had a direct impact not only on, on, the national security, efforts that I was working on, but the 23,000 people that lived and worked on Kirtland Air Force Base, every major city in New Mexico, and I haven’t seen anything that attempts to rectify that situation.
So, we have a natural gas capacity and delivery challenge that still exists in some form. I’m not sure exactly how bad it is now. I’m sure we’ve been working on it, but it still exists from the reporting that I’ve seen and who I’ve been listening to. And then there’s electrical power generation.
You know, folks, we have, we have spent the last decade or more slowly destroying two things about our electrical power grid. It’s called reliability and capacity; the ability to deliver the power to your home or whatever facility you’re looking at. So, you have to have a reliable capability to generate power and by adding things like wind in too large a numbers, adding solar, before it’s technically capable of being reaching reliable state to help power the grid needs that we have today.
Then decreasing reliance on, on nuclear power plants and also increasing our reliance on natural gas power generation which, which, hurts the natural gas delivery that’s going to homes to run heaters in the same situation.
So we have all of these situations that we have slowly destroyed this reliability and capacity issue with, and then layer that on the fact that every control over the grid system nationwide is digital and there’s a cyber security vulnerability to that.
All you have to do is look back a few weeks at the attack on Venezuela and the President of the United States informing everybody, well, we shut all the power off and these weapon systems and, and, the communication systems the government relied on can’t operate without that power. So, there’s a vulnerability in what’s called the SCADA ((Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system, which is the digital controls for all of the electrical grids. no matter who what utility company or what government is operating it, all of those things exist.
And that’s what I’m concerned about. You know, when we look at a state the size of Texas, we don’t have enough battery storage capability yet for the solar parts of the power system in order to be able to make up for that. I think it’s only about 14 gigawatts and in a in a hot in a severely cold situation like this over a number of days and it will take at least 3 days probably closer to four to 7 days for the ice parts of this forecast to clear out.
I went through an ice storm when I was a young man in West Tennessee with my grandparents that had 3 inches of ice and it took over a month for them to get electrical power out. Thankfully, they had natural gas for their heating system and we didn’t freeze to death. But not everybody’s in that situation.
So, I’m very concerned that Texas’s grid will first become overwhelmed and they won’t be able to do those things that are necessary to do to get heat to folks. And I think the cause for concern about potential deaths and fatalities is real. I’ve been watching this system for the last few days myself and it certainly looks like the forecast is going to be true.”
CONCLUSION:
Like, Col. Maness, I too, lived through a major ice storm as a child. We only got about a half an inch in that storm, but we were without power for days!
I used Google AI to refresh my memory about the time of the event:
“A major, memorable ice storm hit Northern Illinois and the Chicago area on January 23–24, 1965. This severe, multi-day icing event caused widespread power outages, glazing trees and power lines, and made walking difficult, often remembered for allowing ice skating on sidewalks.”
We have written how climate change cultists, from Al Gore with his “Inconvenient Truth”, to AOC with her “Green New Deal” have now been proven false. Not one single climate change prediction has come to pass in 40 years! What I never perceived was this now proven hoax (global warming/climate change) could actually cost us American lives and that moment could be now!
“LIVE Coverage Tracking 2,000 Mile Historic Major Winter Storm, 40+ States Impacted | FOX Weather Live”
People are already online giving too much credit to man and zero credit to God with comments like, “This is HAARP weather warfare being waged against us under the guise of ‘climate change’”.
But Russia has been suffering this winter before us (January 19-21) so I think this is more about climate change caused by God rather than anything manmade.
“Russia in Chaos: Kamchatka Slammed by Blizzard — Buildings, Vehicles Buried, Roads Blocked” – Severe Weather
I believe now would be a good time for everyone to pray.
© 2026 by Mark S. Schwendau
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Thinking Conservative.
