Storms and power outages

Reporting an outage

Power is delivered by CenterPoint Energy regardless of which retailer bills for it: "We deliver but do not sell electricity."¹ Outage reports, restoration estimates and downed-line reports go to CenterPoint rather than to the retail provider. See electricity.

Electric outage or downed line: 713-207-2222.¹ A gas leak has a separate number, 888-876-5786.¹ CenterPoint runs an outage tracker that updates "every five minutes",² and the map itself is at tracker.centerpointenergy.com.³

CenterPoint's instruction for a downed line: "See a downed power line? Stay at least 35 feet away and call 911 and 713-207-2222."⁴

Report it, even a flicker

A crew does not get sent to something nobody reported. The commonest thing here is the lights blinking a few times in an evening, and most people wait to see whether it settles down instead of calling.

Several houses on the same streets reporting the same repeated flicker is what turns it from one person's annoyance into something a lineman can go and look for. So report it, and then put it on the outage log so the next time it happens there is something to point at.

This part is a neighbor's account rather than something CenterPoint publishes, passed on in August 2026 from a lineman. It is here as advice and not as a rule.

Generators

The City of Humble lists installing a generator among the works needing plans submitted.⁵ A permanent standby generator involves a transfer switch and a gas or propane connection. Portable generators run outdoors and away from windows, and not in a garage.

Hurricane season

Hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30. The hurricane center puts the peak at September 10, "with most activity occurring between mid-August and mid-October".⁶

The neighborhood keeps its own record now

CenterPoint's tracker shows what is out at this minute and keeps no history, so once the power comes back there is no record anywhere that it went. The outage log is where that gets kept here. Anybody who lives in Timberwood can put an outage on it, and anybody who lost power in the same one adds themselves to it with one tap.

No utility publishes which streets go dark, how often, or for how long.

Still open

• Which parts of Timberwood lose power first and come back last. No utility publishes this, and the outage log is the neighborhood's own attempt at the answer.
• Whether any tree limbs here consistently threaten service drops
• Which local tree services do storm work at short notice, which belongs in Services