It seems like ERCOT was minutes away from a total blackout of the grid Monday. Trying to black start the grid and fixing massive equipment failures while under that weather... Yikes. Months is probably right. https://twitter.com/TexasTribune/status/1362483794339635206

The most recent large blackout was in 2003. A cascading series of failures brought the grid down for about 65 million people in the northeast. They had to start the grid from scratch through an emergency procedure called a black start.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

Recent in North America*. See this excerpt from the investigation into that event. Power plants were mostly operational, just disconnected. They were able to restore the grid quickly (about a day) by bringing in power from neighboring systems.

Source: https://www3.epa.gov/region1/npdes/merrimackstation/pdfs/ar/AR-1165.pdf

Some of the HVDC connections that Texas has to OK, LA, and Mexico are capable of black starts. But grids when they are starting up like this are fragile and prone to failure. If you don't have enough energy to meet demand, connecting customers would just break it again!

Texas would have been just completely screwed in that scenario. Blackouts that could have lasted weeks as generators scrambled to restore service with roads impassable and logistics networks and communications crippled. It would have happened if only a few more plants went down.