I'm a bit worried, since he seems pretty stressed out, and he lives in Texas, and the whole situation down there makes me worry more.

If he lives in Texas, he certainly is "stressed", but that's probably not the root cause. These power outages aren't just local, they're region-wide. That means his cell tower doesn't have power, his ISP doesn't have power, etc.

And the situation hasn't gotten better since it started around 1AM Monday, it's getting worse. Temps are still below freezing, and more plants are shutting down, and more people have lost power as a result.