Cryptocurrency miners in Texas are temporarily shutting down to serve a grid that's predicted to be strained under Winter Storm Landon. 

As the weather event careens through Texas, legislators are grappling with the best way to prevent another Winter Storm Uri. Last year's freeze left more than 4-million people without power in subfreezing temperatures and an estimated 700 people died as a result, according to BuzzFeed News, leaving residents with ongoing fears about a repeat. Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) warned of possible outages in a press conference on Tuesday; these are becoming a reality as the storm migrates eastward.

"??No one can guarantee that there won't be a 'load shed event,'" Abbott said, referring to the possibility of rolling blackouts as ERCOT grapples with strain on its grid. "But what we will work and strive to achieve, and what we're prepared to achieve, is that the power is gonna stay on across the entire state." 

"For a short period of time, a particular neighborhood may be without power, but know that your local power company that you have contracted with is working to make sure that that power will be restored quickly," he continued.   

By Thursday morning, outage aggregator poweroutage.us had spotted nearly 50,000 outages across Texas, as Dallas Fort Worth International Airport grounded flights and a "bitter cold" settled into North Texas.

To help deal with the strain, Bitcoin mines, which proliferated across the energy-rich state after China cracked down on the industry last year, are offering themselves up as part of the response to these conditions.