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As a Texas weatherman was discussing the possibility of rolling blackouts, the power in the studio went out.
Talk about irony!
Chief Meteorologist Travis Herzog at ABC 13 in Houston shared the hilarious moment on Twitter — and it went viral. "That moment you're on live TV talking about the hot weather in Texas that could lead to rolling blackouts...and then the power goes out. 😳," he captioned the 20-second video of his forecast on Thursday (July 13).
"We have this kind of heat over major populations. You get a draw on that electric demand," Herzog said as the studio's power went out. "It looks like we may have just switched over to generator power. Our lights just went out."
Herzog added the news station wasn't sure why the power went out temporarily but "grid conditions are getting *really* tight. Hopefully we can get through this with the lights and A/C ON!" The meteorologist went on to say that the same thing happened during the 5 p.m. broadcast that day. "Maybe it's just my electrifying personality, maybe not. But this time I was fully expecting Ashton Kutcher to come around the corner and say, “You’ve been PUNKED!" he said.
Herzog explained in a tweet what happened that caused the outage. "One of our engineers informed me we went off the grid a little after 3PM. The studio lights aren’t on a dedicated backup power source, so they went off as we switched generator power. Two hours later we went off generator and on the grid and the process repeated," he said.
As temperatures reach extreme highs in the Lone Star State, ERCOT is helping Texans stay informed when it comes to predicting rolling blackouts. For more up-to-date weather information, tune in to your local news station.
You can watch both videos in the Twitter thread below: