Coronavirus News

Dallas County adds new COVID-19 rule: cloth coverings for your face

Your face covering can be a display of your creativity.

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We'll all be wearing some kind of mask, starting Saturday April 18, per a new directive from Dallas County.

The county is requiring anyone who visits essential businesses, essential business employees, or rides public transportation to wear a cloth covering. The ruling is designed to protect residents as well as front-line workers.

At a press conference on April 16, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins outlined what kind of coverings would work, and what prompted the action.

"We asked the public health people, what can we do to speed this thing up so we can get back to our lives faster?" he said. "And one of the things they said was to wear a homemade face covering. We're not asking anyone to go buy a surgical mask, we need those for response workers, and there's a shortage of those."

"We're not doing this because things are getting worse, although we are moving towards our peak, so we will see more cases and deaths," he said. "We're actually flattening the curve — but by doing this we can hopefully get over this faster."

He offered an amusing little show-and-tell with items he picked up at his house, including a "free gimme scarf" from a Dallas Cowboys game, a ski balaclava, and a pillowcase, which he said you could tie up like a bandanna around your nose and mouth.

"If you want to look like you're doing in a mug shot, you can use a towel," he said, smirking.

"Don’t think that a requirement for a face covering is something that is in any way insurmountable," he said. "One of easiest face coverings is to take any old cloth and cut out a 27x27-inch square that makes a large bandanna, like the cowboys wear riding into the dust storm."

Scenarios where face coverings are required: going to the grocery or big box store, and that's for kids, too.

Scenarios where face coverings are not required: riding in your car or walking around the neighborhood.

He said that police would not be actively enforcing, but stores had the right to do so.

"This is not me coming up with an idea," he said. "This is from public health officials saying this will make it faster and safer. The Retailers Association say this is a good idea. Uber said it protects our citizens. DART said they'd been wanting to do it and supported making it a requirement."

He also noted that officials have begun to observe what appears to be a loosening of the shelter-in-place.

"Police and nurses as they go to work have said they see a lot more cars out on the road, and it worries us," he said. "The more people out there bouncing around, the more this spreads and the longer it takes to get over with. Don’t we want to get this over with as soon as possible?"

"It's human nature to take your foot off the gas when you feel like you have a lead, but it just drags this out longer," he said. "Only go to the grocery store when you need things, and make a list ahead of time. Don't use big box stores as an entertainment venue; leave and let other people get what they need. Every trip represents some risk to ourselves, to the frontline workers at stores, and to the community at large."

The new directive follows the latest update on COVID-19 cases. Dallas County Health and Human Services reported 80 additional positive cases as of April 16, bringing the total count in Dallas County to 2,066.

There were also seven additional deaths including:

A male Dallas resident in his 60s who had been critically ill in an area hospital.
A male Dallas resident in his 60s who had been critically ill in an area hospital.
A male Dallas resident in his 70s who had been critically ill in an area hospital.
A female Garland resident in her 70s who had been critically ill in an area hospital.
A female resident of a long-term care facility in Dallas in her 80s who had been critically ill in an area hospital.
A male resident of a long-term care facility in Dallas in his 70s who had been critically ill in an area hospital.
A male resident of a long-term care facility in Dallas in his 80s who had been critically ill in an area hospital.

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Winter weather warning

Forecasters warn of 'potentially catastrophic' winter storm in Texas

Photo by Uliana Sova on Unsplash

This weekend could bring ice to Dallas-Fort Worth and beyond.

With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures in the nation’s northern tier, a new storm is set to emerge this weekend that could coat roads, trees and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the South, including Texas.

The storm arriving late this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be a “widespread potentially catastrophic event from Texas to the Carolinas,” said Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“I don’t know how people are going to deal with it,” he said.

Forecasters on Tuesday, January 20 warned that the ice could weigh down trees and power lines, triggering widespread outages.

“If you get a half of an inch of ice — or heaven forbid an inch of ice — that could be catastrophic,” said Keith Avery, CEO of the Newberry Electric Cooperative in South Carolina.

The National Weather Service warned of "great swaths of heavy snow, sleet, and treacherous freezing rain” starting Friday in much of the nation’s midsection and then shifting toward the East Coast through Sunday.

Temperatures will be slow to warm in many areas, meaning ice that forms on roads and sidewalks might stick around, forecasters say.

The exact timing of the approaching storm — and where it is headed — remained uncertain on Tuesday. Forecasters say it can be challenging to predict precisely which areas could see rain and which ones could be punished with ice.

Meteorologists at WFAA say it's too early for an exact forecast across Dallas-Fort Worth. But it's good to start being weather aware.

Here’s what to know:

Cold air clashing with rain to fuel a 'major winter storm’
An extremely cold arctic air mass is set to dive south from Canada, setting up a clash with the cold temperatures and rain that will be streaming eastward across the southern U.S.

“This is extreme, even for this being the peak of winter,” National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Jackson said of the cold temperatures.

When the cold air meets the rain, the likely result will be “a major winter storm with very impactful weather, with all the moisture coming up from the Gulf and encountering all this particularly cold air that’s spilling in,” Jackson said.

Texas could be a harbinger for other parts of the South
Some of the storm’s earliest impacts could be in Texas on Friday, as the arctic air mass slides south through much of the state, National Weather Service forecaster Sam Shamburger said in a briefing on the storm.

“At the same time, we’re expecting rain to move into much of the state,” Shamburger said.

Low temperatures could fall into the 20s or even the teens in parts of Texas by Saturday, with the potential for a wintery mix of weather in the northern part of the state.

Forecasters cautioned that significant uncertainty remains, particularly over how much ice or snow could fall across north and central Texas.

“It’s going to be a very difficult forecast,” Shamburger said.

An atmospheric river could set up across the Southern U.S.
An atmospheric river of moisture could be in place by the weekend, pulling precipitation across Texas and other states along the Gulf Coast and continuing across Georgia and the Carolinas, forecasters said.

“Global models are painting a concerning picture of what this weekend could look like, with an increasingly strong signal for ice storm potential across North Georgia and portions of central Georgia,” according to the National Weather Service's Atlanta office.

Highway and air travel could be tangled by the storm
Travel is a major concern, as Southern states have less equipment to remove snow and ice from roads, and extremely cold temperatures expected after the storm could prevent ice from melting for several days.

The storm is also expected to impact many of the nation’s major hub airports, including those in Dallas-Fort Worth; Atlanta; Memphis, Tennessee; and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Polar air from Canada to keep northern states in a deep freeze
Unusually cold temperatures are already in place across much of the northern tier of the U.S., but the blast of arctic air expected later this week is “will be the coldest yet,” Jackson said.

“There’s a large sprawling vortex of low pressure centered over Hudson Bay,” Jackson said of the sea in northern Canada that’s connected to the Arctic Ocean. “And this is dominating the weather over all of North America.”

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