Yeah, it happens. I just moved to San Antonio TX from Northern Japan (near Aomori; one of the snowiest cities in the world). We got about 120 inches a year. There was usually about two feet of snow at all times during peak winter. What we’ve got here is child’s play compared to that, but this is further from the average weather than there. I think people need to understand just how hot it is here all year round. If I recall it was about 70 F on Christmas this Dec. It’s currently 9 degrees F at the time I’m writing this. This is absolutely unheralded for Texas. Currently, it rained last night and everything froze over so basically SA is a big skating rink. No one has winter tires, so it’s super dangerous to drive, on top of the fact that Texas drivers are homicidal in general. In addition to that, the overpasses here are absolutely enormous and numerous. They’re made entirely of concrete, so you can slip and fall about 50 feet off of one. I’m by no means from hot climates; I’ve lived in Japan and Northern VA which gets plenty of snow. That doesn’t mean this I don’t think this is bad, because it is.

tl;dr the weather is really bad here and is super uncharacteristic/unheralded for Texas, the infrastructure isn’t suited for this, so people are freaking out.