STORM2K

horselattitudesfarm wrote:Some cool thoughts. I'm up in the Keystone/Breckenridge area on business this week and actually saw frost on the roof next door! The low this morning was 35 and the high, 70. No ozone alert days and heat advisories like in my hometown, Dallas. Maybe some of this Rocky Mountain air will decide to move down Texas' way. Now that August is over half way over hopefully it won't be long. I'll try to bring some of it back with me

Shoshana wrote:I kinda feel like I'm necroposting, but this is where it goes I guess!

It was 103 at Austin Bergstrom today.

I went out with the dog, and it's over 105 out there (here) - I can tell because I can deal with the heat up till 105, then after that I start feeling sick really quick. I came in and checked - it's 107.3F at our house.

I'm turning the sprinklers on so they go off later this week - just in the front yard cause the back yard is already toast. I don't want to kill the trees and bushes out front...

I can't believe we went thru the 'rainy season' with hardly any rain!

I hope it doesn’t go into the history books that way, but judging by what is happening right now, it won’t surprise me if the heat wave that has developed over the last two weeks ends up being so prolonged and historic that it is known by such a moniker.

In fact, it already has made history. Monday’s high of 103 degrees at ABIA was the earliest in the season the temperature ever reached 103 at the airport, where records have been kept since World War II.

In Austin, at Camp Mabry the high also reached 103. The only hotter day ever recorded so early in the year, was May 24, 1925, when the temperature reached 104 degrees. So, yesterday’s 103 at Camp Mabry is the 2nd earliest on record that we have ever recorded an afternoon temperature that hot.

More record heat is possible Tuesday afternoon, with the forecast high of 100 degrees.

What’s causing it? It’s actually very simple. It’s the drought. We are experiencing our hottest spring on record because Texas has just experienced its driest spring on record. When there is soil moisture, and greener vegetation, heat is absorbed through the evaporation process. When there is none, the heat is simply reflected. And, when there is no soil moisture, there less atmospheric moisture for potential rain development. It’s a vicious cycle–a feedback loop.

In Austin, it would take almost 15 inches of rain to just return us to “normal”. That’s the deficit since this drought began last October–the 2nd driest such period in Austin history.

So how bad could it get? This is really kind of scary. We’ve already had five 100 degree days, with summer still two weeks away! We’ve broken or tied high temperature records 7 of the last 13 days.

In the drought of ’07-’09 we experienced one of the hottest summers on record in 2009, with 68 days of triple digit heat. The record is 69. The average is 12. And that summer, we didn’t even reach our first 100 degree day until June 13th.

So, it doesn’t look good. Barring a rare summer pattern change, or a land-falling tropical storm or hurricane that moves into Central Texas, we may be looking at one of the most brutal summers, if not the most brutal, in history.

Rgv20 wrote:Does deep south texas count in this thread? haha anyway being doing the rain dance but so far no luck...maybe I'm dancing to the wrong beat lol.

Anyway it hit 97F at my house no to hot being that the average high is 96.