Texas Winter 2016-2017

[Brent]

Euro has highs near freezing at DFW next Sunday

[weatherdude1108]

Every winter on this forum we hear talk about 1983 and 1989. Every winter that talk proves to be nothing more than just talk. This time it's getting harder and harder to ignore the scientific facts and analogs. While it may not be like those two years, we may end up in Texas with something close. And let me tell you, if you weren't here then or weren't old enough to remember, we'd be in for a world of hurt. The amount of property damage, broken pipes, flooding, and crop damage would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Can't we just be happy with 20s and snow/ice?

I've shared my experiences as a Fire Fighter here in SE Texas during the 1983 and 1989 events, but it worth mentioning again. Fire hydrants literally froze making them unusable for fire fighting. Prolonged temperatures well below freezing during the Christmas/New Year Holiday period left extremely low water pressure as many residential and commercial water supplies broke. There was tremendous property damage due to flooded homes from broken water lines and many were away traveling. We found ourselves responding from one working fire to another as people attempted to stay warm from space heaters. The Upper end of Galveston Bay had a sheet of ice over it. The freeze literally wiped out the citrus crop in S Texas for years. Many other plants suffered significant loss. Other agricultural interests such as livestock died. Been there...done that. Don't care to do it again in this part of the world...

Yeah, I was a young kid in 83, and high school for the 89 freeze, where I was in San Antonio at the time. I vividly remember my dad's ligustrum hedge turning brown and dying in that freeze. Those plants had been through numerous freezes and been fine, but not like the one in 89. That did them in. I think for 83, we did what we called the "ice trick" with the water hose and made a skating rink out of our patio, along with downing a tree branch. I think our indoor shower faucets froze that are adjacent to outside wall. My parents had to get hot water to pour over it. Our outdoor faucets definitely froze, but no bursts. We poured hot water on those also and it thawed out. But yeah, based on those experiences, I don't want temperatures that low either, especially now that I'm the homeowner. Upper 20s with snow/ice is perfectly fine with me also!

[Ntxw]

Analogs are good tool to use if you want to do a seasonal forecast or even how a month will turn out. No two years will ever be alike, even the same 500mb will not result in an exact replica one year to another. There are other factors too that are dynamic, the atmosphere is not linear. There is a reason El Nino weather patterns are one way, and La Nina are another, no two events are exactly alike but they roll the dice in favor of the pattern that weather phenomenon likes to do.

1983 had the very big VEI 5 eruption of El Chichon (1982) down in Mexico that had profound global effects on temperatures for a couple of years including 1983-1985. The same or similar pattern would likely yield the release of arctic air and cold December, doesn't mean the temperatures will respond exactly. The 1983 analog told us there would be strong Pacific blocking in December, and that's what were getting. Weak La Nina/neutral in a good +PDO usually spells good NPAC blocking, as was in 1983, 1989, and 2013. -PDO Ninas are warm winters 1998, 1999, 2011.

[Ntxw]

That being said, the 500mb block in the NPAC and west coast offshore ridging, 4 corners/SW trough in December will usually produce wintry weather. Even more so that we are cold/will be cold several times before then and there is a cold air source. There are many ensemble members to support the OP on one, or more southern plains winter storm potential. I think odds are in our favor for snow/ice/sleet to make it's debut before the month is out for some.

 https://twitter.com/RyanMaue/status/807298971471376385




I'll say it again for emphasis. The cold outbreak this week and next week is not from a favorable 500mb. It is a byproduct of cold air pooling over North America and willing its way south. Once the trough digs into the SW, that is a favorable 500mb pattern for cold and snow.

[Texas Snowman]

Every winter on this forum we hear talk about 1983 and 1989....And let me tell you, if you weren't here then or weren't old enough to remember, we'd be in for a world of hurt. The amount of property damage, broken pipes, flooding, and crop damage would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Yes, no doubt. I've posted this story before on previous winter threads about the December 1983 freeze and how it impacted Texas coastal fisheries. I'll post it again this year (especially with all of the Dec. 1983 talk) because I think that it helps illustrate how severe that long-term cold spell was and some of the effects it had on the state of Texas. Some of the descriptions of ice formation on the coastal waters are just mind boggling. It's interesting reading for sure:

-----

Christmas 1983 freeze left heavy mark on Texas coastal fisheries

By SHANNON TOMPKINS/Houston Chronicle
Dec. 24, 2003, 8:21PM

AUTUMN'S official final day in 1983 became the unofficial first day of a new reality for Texas coastal fisheries resources, the people who manage them and the Texans who enjoy them.

Events that began that day, 20 years ago this week, accelerated changes in Texas coastal fisheries management philosophy, forced anglers to accept the fragility of coastal resources and left wounds in the inshore fishery that may never heal.

"It changed everything," Gene McCarty, former director of coastal fisheries for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and current chief of staff for the agency, said of what has become known as the Christmas '83 Freeze.

Dec. 21, 1983, dawned seasonably mild with a light, humid southeast wind blowing from the Gulf.

That afternoon, an arctic cold front of epic strength rushed south over Texas, bringing screaming north wind, sleet and dropping temperatures.

Temperature slipped below freezing in Houston the afternoon of Dec. 22, and did not rise above that mark for five days -- a record that still stands.

The Texas coast was locked in one of the most severe, persistent freezes in more than a century.

Christmas morning, Houston recorded a low of 11 degrees. Galveston registered 14 degrees. It was 6 below zero in Dallas, and 13 in Del Rio.

"It was 15 degrees in Palacios," said Paul Hammerschmidt, who in 1983 was a TPWD coastal fisheries biologist based in Port O'Connor. "It was warmer in Anchorage, Alaska."

Another brutal arctic cold front just before New Year's Day reinforced the cold, and kept temperatures below or near freezing for several more days.

"I remember getting in a net skiff with a commercial fisherman in Flour Bluff (near Corpus Christi) on Jan. 2 and going down to Baffin Bay," said Ed Hegen, then a TPWD coastal fisheries biologist working out of Rockport. "It was unbelievably cold. I don't think I've thawed out since then."

What Hegen, now Lower Texas Coast regional director for TPWD's coastal fisheries division, saw in Baffin Bay that day mirrored what other TPWD coastal fisheries staff witnessed when they went afield to survey the bays.

"There were windrows of dead fish everywhere," Hegen recalled. "They were stacked for yards along the shorelines. Spotted seatrout, redfish, drum -- every species in the bay."

The shallow bay was clear as glass, Hegen said. Visible on the bay floor was a carpet of dead fish at least equal to the numbers stacked against the windward shores and floating in sheets on the surface.

Texas inshore marine fisheries had been caught in a frigid, fatal trap. Evolved for life in a temperate, even tropical environment, Texas marine life is not built to endure severe cold.

Caught in water about 45 degrees or lower for more than a day, they die. Death can come from suffocation -- the metabolism of the cold-blooded fish slows to the point they can't extract oxygen from the water. Or they can suffer frostbite, having the flesh of fins, tails and other extremities literally frozen.

"The severity and duration of the '83 freeze were what made it so deadly," said Hammerschmidt, now program director of regulations for TPWD's coastal fisheries division.

Fisheries biologists knew fish were dying, but they couldn't get on the water to assess the impact until the worst of the weather had passed.

"The bays literally froze over," Hammerschmidt said. "We couldn't get boats in the water."

"There was ice 4 inches thick for 100 yards off the shore (of the Upper Laguna Madre)," Hegen remembers. "We had to wait until it began breaking up to get on the water."

TPWD scrambled coastal fisheries staff to begin assessing the freeze's impact, surveying the bays from boats, on foot and from the air.

It was worse than they could imagine.

The first place Hammerschmidt inspected was the shallows of the San Antonio and Espiritu Santo bays.

"I went into Shoalwater Bay and it was covered with dead fish -- redfish stacked in heaps like cordwood."

The beach of Matagorda Island was littered with carcasses of adult redfish and the occasional sea turtle.

Texas bays have always seen occasional freeze-triggered fish kills. But almost all during the 20th Century had been relatively minor or affected only portions of the Texas coast.

The Christmas '83 Freeze was different. It hammered the entire Texas coast, from Sabine Pass to Port Isabel.

TPWD coastal fisheries biologists began counting dead fish, using sampling techniques they had developed as part of standardized fish population research the agency had begun in 1975.

At the time it was the most avant-garde fisheries work in the nation.

The tally was breathtaking. TPWD estimated the freeze killed more than 20 million coastal finfish. The number of invertebrate marine life -- shrimp, crab, etc. -- lost was estimated at more than one-billion organisms.

Not since 1952 had Texas seen such a widespread and devastating freeze-caused fish kill.

In 1952, Texas fisheries managers could do little to address the effects of such a crippling blow to coastal fisheries. Coastal fisheries were relatively lightly utilized and the Texas Game, Fish and Oyster Commission (precursor to TPWD) was hamstrung by political realities of the day.

But 1983 was different.

Earlier that year, the Texas Legislature had passed the Uniform Wildlife Regulatory Act, a watershed piece of legislation that gave TPWD authority to set statewide fishing and hunting regulations.

(Prior to the law, counties could, and often did, set their own hunting and fishing regulations, even if in direct conflict with state regulations, blunting scientific management efforts.)

Also, improved science, a move toward proactive management of fisheries and a public becoming increasingly aware of pressure on coastal resources set the stage for what happened in the wake of the '83 freeze.

Almost immediately, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission moved to impose more conservative recreational and commercial fishing regulations.
Fisheries needed the protection.

Anglers needed no convincing of that. The bays were empty.

But TPWD used its sampling protocols to document the massive hole the freeze left in coastal fisheries.

"The freeze proved the value of our long-term monitoring programs," Hammerschmidt said. "We could document the state of the fisheries to justify management moves and track their effectiveness."

"That freeze was the thing that shaped our coastal fisheries management philosophy, and turned the focus on conservation," said Gene McCarty. "We began looking at the long-term, and being proactive instead of reactive. It was the direction we were heading, but the freeze accelerated things."

When the freeze hit, McCarty was working at the just-opened John Wilson Fish Hatchery near Corpus Christi, the first hatchery in the nation devoted to producing inshore marine fish for stocking into coastal waters.

The hatchery's focus was on redfish, a species that even before the freeze had been decimated by overfishing.

"Prior to the freeze, we were in the research and assessment mode, just getting our feet on the ground and stocking fish only in San Antonio and Espiritu Santo bays," McCarty said. "After the freeze, we immediately went statewide, stocking redfish in every bay on the coast."

"The freeze kicked our hatchery program into high gear," Hegen said. "We had been initially working just with redfish, but we started doing the first really serious research into raising trout because of the freeze."

Coastal fishing was horrible in 1984 and into '85. But the trout and redfish fisheries slowly improved, statewide.

Then, in 1989, two killer freezes -- in February and another at Christmas -- killed millions more coastal fish.

But the damage from those freezes totaled about half the casualties of the '83 freeze. TPWD imposed slightly tighter fishing regulations, worked on habitat and stocking. It helped that, in 1988, all netting had been banned from coastal waters, a move justified by TPWD's monitoring.

The coastal fishery recovered from those '89 freezes much quicker than in '83.

"That faster recovery is directly related to lessons we learned from the '83 freeze," Hammerschmidt said.

Shannon Tompkins covers outdoor recreation for the Chronicle. His column appears Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.

[Tireman4]

I remember it well. I was a senior at Santa Fe High School. We were living in a trailer while we were building our house. Oh, that was fun. The pipes were laying out to the water well. I guess my father believed that 1( it would never get that cold and 2) this was temporary. Of course, they froze. No water. No bathing ( we had to go to Monsanto in Texas City to bath..yea....my father worked there...35 years..LOL). I remember it was 13 degrees. Just after Alicia ( our trailer took a beating too...we put plywood up to replace the siding, so however ugly it looked before, it was just horrid then..no we were not in the trailer during Alicia) so everything was topsy turvy...

[Texas Snowman]

Also, here's the 30th anniversary summary of the December 1983 freeze as posted by Fort Worth NWS a few years ago:

-----

"December 2013 marks the 30-year anniversary of the coldest December on record for north Texas.

The month of December 1983 remains in the record books as the coldest December for both Dallas-Fort Worth and Waco. Temperatures on average across the region were 12.1 degrees Fahrenheit below normal for the month (Figure 1). In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, average temperatures during December 1983 were 4 degrees colder than any other December on record!

A very active weather pattern during December 1983 brought all types of weather consisting of:Consecutive Hours Below Freezing

•Tornadoes in east and southeast Texas on the 10th

•A significant snow storm across north and east Texas on the 15th and 16th, and finally

•Extreme cold during the end of the month

Low temperature map from December 22, 1983A series of upper level systems and surface cold fronts affected north Texas during the month of December 1983 contributing to the varied weather. A total of seven cold fronts have been identified that aided in dropping temperatures at the end of the month below the freezing mark for about 10 consecutive days! On December 10th, severe thunderstorms developed ahead of a dryline and cold front producing 12 tornadoes in east and southeast Texas, including four F2 tornadoes. Another cold front on the 15th brought a significant snow storm to north and east Texas on the 15th and 16th. snowfall mapSnowfall totals ranged from a trace to over 8 inches, and approximately 15,000 electric customers were without power for nearly 36 hours. In north Texas, the highest snowfall recorded from this event was 8.5” at a volunteer weather observing site in southern Rains County. Several weather observers reported that the snowfall on the 15th and 16th remained on the ground through the remainder of the month.

The arrival of the front on the 15th brought the first nights of freezing temperatures to north Texas, but the most significant front arrived in north Texas on the 18th (Figures 2, 3 & 4). This front brought bitterly cold arctic air to north Texas followed by three more fronts on the 21st, 24th, and 28th. The air behind all of the fronts during the latter half of the month had origins from the Arctic. The highest sea level pressure ever recorded in Dallas-Fort Worth occurred behind the front on the 24th when the surface pressure rose to 31.06 inches!

Beginning on the 18th, temperatures in several locations in north Texas started falling below freezing and remained below freezing in some locations until January. DFW International Airport reported a record 295 consecutive hours with temperatures below freezing from the morning of the 18th until the afternoon of the 30th (Figure 5). Waco Airport (called Madison Cooper Airport in 1983) recorded a total of 151 consecutive hours with temperatures below freezing beginning on the morning of the 21st and ending on the afternoon of the 27th (Figure 6).

---------------------
A comparison of the two climate sites is in the table below.

DFW International Airport / Waco Airport

Average Monthly Temperature (Departure From Normal)
DFW: 34.8 (-11.9)
Waco: 38.3 (-10.0)

Average Monthly Maximum Temperature (Departure From Normal)
DFW: 43.4 (-13.1)
Waco: 48.1 (-11.0)

[i]Average Monthly Minimum Temperature (Departure From Normal)
[/i]DFW: 26.1 (-10.7)
Waco: 28.5 (-9.0)

Coldest Temperature Recorded (Date, December 1983)
DFW: 5 (22nd)
Waco: 7 (25th)

Number of Daily Minimum Temperature Records that still stand from December 1983
DFW: 6
Waco: 7

Number of Daily Low Maximum Temperature Records that still stand from December 1983
DFW: 5
Waco: 4

December 1983 Temperature Summary for north Texas climate sites. All temperatures are in degrees Fahrenheit.


----------------------

The extent of the cold weather was also well documented by volunteer weather observers across north Texas. Most sites recorded temperatures below freezing from the 19th-29th, but some sites along the Red River and in the northeastern portions of north Texas reported temperatures remaining below freezing into January 1984. These sites included Gainesville, Monkstown, Paris, Sherman, Emory, and Sulphur Springs. The coldest temperature recorded in north Texas during this month was -2 degrees Fahrenheit at Glen Rose 2W on the 30th.

A summary of the event in Storm Data (NCDC 1984) indicated that six people in north Texas lost their lives as a result of the cold temperatures and over a hundred were injured. Residents in several communities lost gas and electric as these companies were forced to close area plants and businesses. Water line breaks were also a problem, especially for the Fort Worth Water Department who spent nearly $1.5 million to repair city water lines, not including homes and businesses. Agricultural losses were estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars with initial insurance claims over $50 million. Both Eagle Mountain Lake and Lake Worth froze over. The extreme cold affected not only north Texas but also the entire state of Texas and the eastern two-thirds of the country. In Texas alone, damage from the cold was estimated at $50-100 million. At least 151 deaths nationwide were attributed to the prolonged cold period, many of which occurred in the south and southeast parts of the country.

Even though December 1983 was the coldest December on record for north Texas, the coldest temperatures ever recorded in this month occurred in later years. For Dallas-Fort Worth, the coldest temperature ever recorded in the month of December was -1 degrees Fahrenheit in 1989. The coldest temperature ever recorded in December in Waco was -4 degrees Fahrenheit in 1989. For additional information on climate records for Dallas-Fort Worth and Waco, visit our climate site at: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/fwd/?n=ntexclima.

[weatherdude1108]

Voodoo Fantasy land or White Christmas for some of Texas, and mixed Christmas for others? Probably voodoo, as James Spann would say.

[Tireman4]

000
FXUS64 KHGX 091728
AFDHGX

Area Forecast Discussion
National Weather Service Houston/Galveston TX
1128 AM CST Fri Dec 9 2016

.AVIATION...
VFR conditions are expected through the period with moderate NE
winds gradually swinging around to ESE/SE by tomorrow afternoon.
11

&&

.PREV DISCUSSION... /ISSUED 1057 AM CST Fri Dec 9 2016/

UPDATE...
Observations show temperatures rebounding back into the low 40s
for much of the area. Temperatures should top out in the upper 40s
this afternoon with NE winds and some cloud cover moving over the
region. Cloud cover cleared in a few spots this morning so
northern portions of the area did observe a freeze. Cloud cover
will be the trick again for low temperatures Saturday morning. We
will look at the potential for another freeze warning for Liberty,
Montgomery, San Jacinto, Polk counties since temps could drop
below freezing tonight but may not have this morning. Otherwise
only changes to the forecast were to keep up with temperature
trends since the forecast look on track.

39

[A.V.]

But seriously, it's crazy how similar this year's weather pattern has been on par with 1983. The wet spring, hot and dry summer, and now the very cold looking pattern around mid to late December.

Summer 2016 was not dry. Lots of rain across Texas during that August.

[Cerlin]

Voodoo Fantasy land or White Christmas for some of Texas, and mixed Christmas for others? Probably voodoo, as James Spann would say.

Man I just want that snow band to go a little more south.

[Texas Snowman]

I remember it well. I was a senior at Santa Fe High School. We were living in a trailer while we were building our house. Oh, that was fun. The pipes were laying out to the water well. I guess my father believed that 1( it would never get that cold and 2) this was temporary. Of course, they froze. No water. No bathing ( we had to go to Monsanto in Texas City to bath..yea....my father worked there...35 years..LOL). I remember it was 13 degrees. Just after Alicia ( our trailer took a beating too...we put plywood up to replace the siding, so however ugly it looked before, it was just horrid then..no we were not in the trailer during Alicia) so everything was topsy turvy...

I was a senior in high school during the December 1983 outbreak. Snow fell here in Denison on December 14 and very early on the 15th (I think we had 6-7" at my house) and it ushered in the arctic attack. Repeated arctic frontal passages kept the temperature below 32 degrees for 296 consecutive hours in Dallas and about the same number of hours here in the Red River Valley. We had snow on the ground until New Years.

Water mains froze and burst, pipes burst in many homes, there were a number of fires from people trying to heat their houses and many smaller lakes froze over completely to the point you could walk or skate on them.

At 89,000-acre Lake Texoma, only the main lake body/river channel remained totally ice free. All of Texoma's lake arms, creek channels, and backwaters were frozen solid with several inches of ice. I tried to go duck hunting and three of us couldn't even crack the ice. Another friend slid his airboat across the ice to reach an open patch of water during that spell.

As for the other year getting tossed around a lot this week, I was in college at UNT during the 1989 outbreak. It was -2 at my parent's house on Christmas morning that year. There was also a huge multi-alarm fire at the Beall's Department Store in Denison on Christmas Eve with the mercury hovering around 12 degrees. The fireman were caked in solid ice and were taking shifts going into a nearby store for hot chocolate, coffee, to warm up, and to break the ice off their coats and gear. Unfortunately, it was a massive fire that burned down a three story department store, some surrounding buildings and resulted in the death of one of Denison FD's fire-fighters.

[Yukon Cornelius]

Being a biologist dealing with native wildlife myself and knowing people that deal with the marine aspect and fishery side of things, I wonder if they are taking any back burner extra precautions with 1983 and 1989 being thrown around lately? I'll have to do some checking and make a few calls.

[JDawg512]

But seriously, it's crazy how similar this year's weather pattern has been on par with 1983. The wet spring, hot and dry summer, and now the very cold looking pattern around mid to late December.

Summer 2016 was not dry. Lots of rain across Texas during that August.

Key word being August... June (normally our second wettest month of the year in Austin) saw very little rain. July was abnormally dry. September had some rain, though for my specific area it mostly occured during one event. Even October was extremely dry considering it is the 3rd wettest month of the year. I wouldn't call this summer a washout simply because August had a lot of rain.

It comes down to this... When we see several weeks of dry conditions followed by 3 or 4 weeks of heavy rain followed by several weeks of dry conditions, it doesn't do a whole lot for soil moisture. Evaporation is very high during the summer months so by the time August came, much of that rainfall mearly saved the overall soil moisture levels from getting worse and a good amount of that rainfall simply washed away without doing anything. The grass, plants and trees were very happy but they sucked up the moisture within a few weeks and by mid to late September, soil moisture levels deep down was again on the decline.

Personally I consider it a wet summer when all of the summer months see at least average to above average rainfall and where we see 2 to 3 days per week where rain falls. Doesn't have to be a lot but it's better for smaller amounts of rain distributed over a greater time span rather than a whole lot of rain squeezed out over a few days.

2007 is more of an extreme example but it was a summer where we saw a prolonged wet period that lasted throught the majority of summer. We got a lot of rain but it rained anywhere from a quarter of an inch to an inch nearly every day or every other day for weeks rather than all of that rain falling within a single month. It's why we didn't reach the 100s but we reached the 100s this summer as well as last.

[TeamPlayersBlue]

The 1989 blast I was 5 years old and it's the reason I am a weather fanatic today. I yelled for my parents when the sleet banged my window in the middle of the night sine my room faced north. I remember my Mom saying its going to snow tomorrow and i woke up to a christmas wonderland. It was great!

[BigB0882]

It has really sucked being in Louisiana the last few winters. Even when cold does come down, it wants to stay to our west thanks to the SE ridge. I need that thing to budge a little further east.

[Texas Snowman]

Being a biologist dealing with native wildlife myself and knowing people that deal with the marine aspect and fishery side of things, I wonder if they are taking any back burner extra precautions with 1983 and 1989 being thrown around lately? I'll have to do some checking and make a few calls.

I know that Texas Parks and Wildlife has some contingency plans in place for severe coastal freeze events (http://tpwd.texas.gov/regulations/outdo ... eze-events).

But so far, I haven't heard or seen anything that is being openly discussed. I'm sure there are some internal conversations taking place though about what they will be doing if some of this actually does materialize.

[Portastorm]

It has really sucked being in Louisiana the last few winters. Even when cold does come down, it wants to stay to our west thanks to the SE ridge. I need that thing to budge a little further east.

Maybe but at least you have Cajun food and LSU football.

[Ntxw]

DFW managed 38 so far today. It is starting to clear out some but the sun will set soon, will we make 40 officially?

[aggiecutter]

NE Texas winter storm on the horizon. Could be:




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