HOUSTON – A cold front arriving on Christmas Eve could bring severe weather in time for the holidays.

CenterPoint Energy said it is keeping an eye on the potential threat and has implemented its expanded holiday staffing plan, which includes activating additional frontline electrical teams. They also prepare additional materials and equipment.

RELATED: Beware! A weather warning was issued for Christmas Eve into the overnight hours due to the possibility of storms

“We are paying particular attention to the possibility of outages that could arise from the forecast strong wind gusts and lightning. Because our entire Houston electric district is at low risk of severe weather, we do not currently anticipate widespread damage and associated outages, but we are coordinating our resources and response for any consequences,” said Matt Lanza, meteorology manager at CenterPoint and a member of the Emergency Preparedness and Emergency Management Committee CenterPoint Response Teams.

They will also share customer communication updates after patrolling the area and assessing any potential damage.

CenterPoint says customers should also create their own outage plan. CenterPoint’s new tracker allows customers to stay up to date on potential outages.

There were many problems with the tracker during Hurricane Beryl. Since then, CenterPoint has launched a new one with significant upgrades.

According to CenterPoint, the new outage tracker is cloud-based and mobile-friendly. Outage Tracker features include:

• Current: The data is updated on the tracker every five minutes. They added that a customer’s outage status may not change as it is updated as new recovery information becomes available.
• Mobile friendly interface: Easy to use on mobile phones or tablets.
• Weather integration: Includes a weather integration layer to see how weather can impact outages.
• Improved reliability: The tracker is cloud-based. This allows for scalability for growth, increased web traffic, and improved performance.
• Summary reporting: Provides a summary of outages by county, city and zip code.
• Street and satellite views: This feature helps customers better understand the vegetation density in their area that can impact outages.

View the interactive outage tracker here.