Austin Energy Fumbles Again: Thousands Swelter in the Dark

Buckle up, folks! For the second night in a row, Austin Energy has left thousands of its customers powerless — literally. Over 5,600 homes were without juice Thursday night, thanks to the brilliance of our local energy gurus.

By 9:30 p.m., they'd managed to get that number down to a cool 2,000. According to Austin Energy’s outage map, power was estimated to be back by 9:50 p.m. — just in time for bedtime stories by flashlight!

The blackouts hit Southwest Austin the hardest, with two main areas affected: one near Southwest Parkway and Barton Creek Boulevard, and another south of U.S. 290 and east of RM 1826.

What caused the outage? Your guess is as good as ours! Austin Energy's outage map says it's "under investigation." Meanwhile, they claim Wednesday's outages, which left over 7,000 customers in the dark, were a “local issue” and not related to the statewide electric grid, operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

We reached out to Austin Energy for more info, but they were too busy playing musical chairs with power lines to respond.

Oh, and did we mention it was hotter than Hades? Temperatures soared to 107 degrees on Thursday, breaking records at Austin Camp Mabry. The National Weather Service said it hit 109 degrees on Wednesday.

Stay cool, Austin — and maybe invest in some generators? 🌡️🔥