C/S TX Weather: Seasonal with some rains

[gboudx]

And then there's this glimmer of hope from DFW:

HOWEVER...THE INFLUENCE OF THE
UPPER LEVEL RIDGE WILL STILL BE STRONG ENOUGH TO KEEP US NEAR OR
IN TRIPLE DIGIT TEMPERATURES NEXT WEEK. IN NORTHWEST FLOW
SCENARIOS...THERE ARE TYPICALLY TWO POSSIBILITIES THAT COULD BRING
RELIEF TO NORTH TEXAS. ONE POSSIBILITY IS A DISTURBANCE MOVING
SOUTH IN THE NORTHWEST FLOW THAT MAY BRING CLOUD COVER AND RAIN TO
NORTH TEXAS. THE OTHER POSSIBILITY IS A SURFACE FRONT MOVING DOWN
THE PLAINS THAT MAY BRING THE SAME RESULTS. BOTH THE GFS AND ECMWF
SUGGEST THESE SCENARIOS ARE POSSIBLE AROUND THE MIDDLE OF NEXT
WEEK...BUT THIS IS JUST BEYOND THE EXTENT OF OUR FORECAST PERIOD
AND FOR NOW THE FORECAST REMAINS HOT AND DRY NEXT WEEK.

[Ntxw]

^ Fronts just simply don't stand a chance here in August. And frankly with this drought I don't see enough moisture for disturbances to make most of. Wait until mid Sept tbh at least by then the overnight lows should be more comfortable! Averages are slowly creeping down too! Woo!

[somethingfunny]

These are 11:00 AM observations.

[gboudx]

^ I'm doubting that 107 in Richardson. I'm in Richardson and went out for lunch earlier and the car temp showed 101.

[Shoshana]

Tues: Day 49 100+ 107 Mabry

Day 17 in a row.


DFW and Austin will both be breaking consecutive 100+ day records - I don't see any reason they won't.

What is the DFW record for 100+ days in total? Off to check! Oh 69... set in 1980 (of course!)

Waco consecutive 100+ record is 42 also set in 1980. 63 is the total for the current record.

(from KXAN)

[somethingfunny]

106 already at KDFW as of 12:53PM. On most days my indicator of "Is it going to be hotter than Hell today?" is if we hit 100 by 1PM or 2PM. I have a strong feeling we'll be topping out over 110 today.

[Shoshana]

Austin: Wed Day 50 100+

Day 18 in a row.

Gah.

Dallas/Waco -you're also 100+

Ok, I think Texas north of and including San Marcus all the way to the border is 100+

[somethingfunny]

Air conditioner status: Working!

[Portastorm]

Congratulations, somethingfunny ... 110 and I bet it got hotter at your place! Unbelievable!

I'm waiting for our thermometers to start reading "Too Damn Hot" instead of 107 or 110 or whatever.

[southerngale]

It's currently 111° at Fort Worth Alliance Airport and 110° at Dallas Executive Airport.

[RachelAnna]

Is there any indication when we will be done with these high temperatures for good?! Not only is the heat oppressive, but the drought just makes it all the more difficult!

[vbhoutex]

Is there any indication when we will be done with these high temperatures for good?! Not only is the heat oppressive, but the drought just makes it all the more difficult!

Not expecting much of a break through August from most reports I see.

[South Texas Storms]

From today's NWS Austin/SA morning AFD: NO HEAT OR DROUGHT RELEIF IS IN SIGHT FOR THE NEXT WEEK TO 10
DAYS. THE CENTER OF THE BROAD UPPER RIDGE WILL BE NEAR THE ARK-
LA-TEX...THEN SHIFTING SLOWLY WESTWARD OVER THE NEXT WEEK."

That was one of the first things I read this morning and my heart just sank.

Same here Portastorm. It would be nice to wake up and read our morning AFD that says drought relief is on the way!

[Shoshana]

Congratulations, somethingfunny ... 110 and I bet it got hotter at your place! Unbelievable!

I'm waiting for our thermometers to start reading "Too Damn Hot" instead of 107 or 110 or whatever.

exactly.


Well, we're back from a nice cool vacation and back to the frying pan...

[somethingfunny]

Congratulations, somethingfunny ... 110 and I bet it got hotter at your place! Unbelievable!

I'm waiting for our thermometers to start reading "Too Damn Hot" instead of 107 or 110 or whatever.

exactly.


Well, we're back from a nice cool vacation and back to the frying pan...

Every weekend I say I want to just start driving north until it's not hot anymore, and then I come to find out it's 100 degrees straight up to Minnesota. Where'd y'all go?

[gboudx]

jeff's email this morning. FWIW, there are no water restrictions in effect in the DFW area that I'm aware of.

Without any widespread soaking rains from tropical storm Don, the state continues to sink deeper and deeper into one of the worst droughts to ever be experienced.

July was another extremely dry month across the region, although a few locations mainly east of I-45 did see better rainfall amounts that helped wet the upper layers of soils, west of I-45 there was very little if any rainfall. The US drought monitor places 75% of the state in exceptional drought status and 92% in either extreme of exceptional drought status. As is usual with such dry ground has come the heat! Many climate sites set their warmest or second warmest July averages on record. Dallas has gone 33 days straight at or above 100 degrees and Waco 35 days straight. The record for Dallas is 42 days straight in the hot summer of 1980 and for Waco is 42 days also in the summer of 1980.

So How Dry has it been:

Houston has now gone 191 days since 1 inch of rain fell (The record which will fall today is 192 days in 1917-1918)

In a normal year the City of Houston will see about 48.0 inches of rainfall. Since the start of the heart of this drought in October 2010 (August 1 being 10 months) Houston has only received 16.63 inches of rainfall in those past 10 months of 34% of its yearly rainfall for this period of time. To make up this departure Houston would have to have over 31.0 inches of rainfall in the next two months to end the Oct 2010 to Oct 2011 period at near normal.

The period from October 1, 2010 to July 31, 2011 is the driest ever recorded for BUSH IAH and the second driest for Hobby and College Station

COLLEGE STATION HOUSTON (IAH) HOBBY

11.95 1925 16.63 2011 20.01 1956

12.34 2011 19.18 1917 21.12 2011

14.33 1917 21.06 1951 22.87 1971

15.46 1951 21.37 1956 23.10 1988

18.95 1956 22.08 1964 23.59 1951

The more astounding record is the period from February 2011 to July 2011 which is also the driest ever on record. The most amazing part of this record is that even to move to second place, 4.92 inches of rainfall would be required at BUSH IAH and 5.67 inches of rainfall at Hobby to move those locations out of the top driest spot. That is a staggering record! Since Feb 1, Houston has only received 25% of its normal rainfall.

February 1 to July 31 rainfall (driest ever by far for IAH and Hobby and second driest for College Station):

COLLEGE

HOUSTON HOBBY STATION

5.81 2011 6.36 2011 7.00 1925
10.73 1937 12.03 1971 7.64 2011
10.85 1917 12.59 1954 8.48 1917
11.30 1915 12.65 1956 9.93 1974
11.71 1925 12.80 1996 10.85 1996

Rainfall Departures from October 1, 2010 to July 31, 2011 are:

Bellville: -23.44
Brenham: -22.25
College Station: -20.65
Columbus: -22.88
Conroe: -24.52
Crockett: -18.05
Danevang: -18.62
Galveston: -13.68
Freeport: -23.42
Hobby: -22.68
BUSH IAH: -23.05
Huntsville: -27.03
Katy: -22.14
Livingston: -28.94
Madisonville: -24.40
Matagorda: -22.73
Tomball: -28.49
Victoria: -22.95
Corpus Christi: -14.77

Impacts:

The impacts of the current drought are severe and becoming critical especially with respect to water supply.

Agriculture:

An astounding 91% of Texas pasture and rangeland is rated as poor or very poor…a new record. The previous record was 86% in 2006. Agriculture nets Texas 99.1 billion dollars per year into the economy and is going to take a hard hit with the current drought and most spring/summer crops have either failed or our yielding very poor harvests. Many locations that raise cattle have completely run out of stock water and can no longer supply fresh water to cattle forcing ranchers to sell. Additionally, with vegetation health extremely poor, there is little to no feed for cattle and hay supplies are having to be bought and shipped from the central plains.

Fire Weather:

The worst fire season ever for the state of Texas surpassing the previous number of acres burned by over 1 million acres)

The extremely dry conditions, poor vegetation health, hot afternoon temperatures combined with low afternoon RH continue to promote extreme fire weather concerns across much of the state. While recent rains over SE TX have helped green up surface vegetation, areas west of I-45 remain in very poor condition and rapid fire spread continues to be a concern. Since Nov 15, 2011 there have been 16,368 wildfires which have burned 3.4 million acres (a new record, previous record was 2.1 million acres in 2005-2006). 56% of the total national acreage burned by wildfires this year has been in Texas. Four of the 10 largest wildfires ever in the state of Texas occurred in April of 2011. A total of 1,007 firefighters from 49 states have responded to the Texas wildfires. 32,610 structures have been threatened with 2,354 structures lost. 30,070 aviation drops have occurred including 15.0 million gallons of water and 4.0 million gallons of fire retardant. 792,393 gallons of water and retardant were dropped on June 20, 2011 in most in a single day on the SE TX wildfires. 248 out of 254 TX counties are currently under outdoor burned bans (previous record was 221 counties in 2006).

Water Supply:

Water supply system continue to show steep declines in the last few weeks as temperatures have risen into the 100’s greatly increasing the evaporation rate. Lake Somerville has seen a 6.0% drop in its capacity in the last 10 days…that is a significant amounts of reduction. Water supply lakes are nearing their “tipping point” the water level where due to the sloping design of lakes that water levels will begin to drop rapidly…the majority of storage is found in the upper top of lakes with rapidly lowering storage as the levels begin to fall. The following shows a few lakes with their current feet below normal pool:

Lake Conroe: -3.70 (84%)
Lake Houston: -6.50 (90%)
Lake Buchanan: -19.92
Lake Travis: -41.34
Toledo Bend: -9.76
Lake Livingston: -1.30 (96%)
Lake Somerville: -6.3 (57%)
Lake Georgetown: -16.8 (52%)

Note the combined storage of both Lakes Buchanan and Travis are currently at 535 of their capacity, the lowest point during the exceptional drought of 2009 in this area was 39%. LCRA estimates that evaporation from the Highland Lakes chain from Jan-June was 97,000 acre-feet or about 14% higher than that during the drought of 2009. Without rainfall the current projection is for the capacity of the Highland Lakes to fall to between 43-45% by Sept 1 and 38-41% by Oct 1 or about 1 foot per week. Due to the extremely low lake levels only 1 boat ramp is open on Lake Travis out of 11.

Mandatory and voluntary water restrictions are in place for hundreds of local municipalities across the state and in some places such as Llano and the town of Robert Lee the primary water supply has/is running dry and those towns are using emergency backup supplies which are being depleted rapidly. As of July29 at total of 652 water supply systems are being affected by some sort of water restriction. 386 are under mandatory water restrictions and 263 under voluntary. A total list of water restrictions can be found at the following link: http://www.tceq.texas.gov/drinkingwater ... ughtw.html

Forecast:

The forecast for the rest of summer into fall does not show much promise for significant improvement to the current drought. The only real hope for the next 1-2 months is a strong tropical system, but with the position of the upper high over Texas it would take a fairly strong system to try to bump up and displace the entrenched high pressure over the state. If the tropics do not help us out we will then have to wait until cold front return in the fall for widespread rains. It is very possible that Texas is in the midst of a multi-year drought that began in 2007 and really intensified at the end of 2008 after Hurricanes Ike and Dolly. In fact is you look at the state as a whole it has been fairly dry since the very wet summer of 2007 and then has gotten really bad in the last 10 months.

The current drought forecast shows a continuation of the drought and below normal rainfall and above normal temperatures into the fall unless a tropical system impacts the state.

The amount of rainfall required to bring the Palmer Drought Index to near .5 (no drought conditions). Note that is over 15.0 inches for most of the state not 15 inches. Most areas would require between 15-28 inches of rainfall.

Precipitation Needed to Return to Normal

[Portastorm]

ERCOT, as of 2 p.m. today, raised the energy emergency to Level 2. Not good news, folks ... not good at all. Here is what it means:

http://www.kutnews.org/post/updated-factories-power-down-avoid-rolling-blackouts

[Shoshana]

Congratulations, somethingfunny ... 110 and I bet it got hotter at your place! Unbelievable!

I'm waiting for our thermometers to start reading "Too Damn Hot" instead of 107 or 110 or whatever.

exactly.


Well, we're back from a nice cool vacation and back to the frying pan...

Every weekend I say I want to just start driving north until it's not hot anymore, and then I come to find out it's 100 degrees straight up to Minnesota. Where'd y'all go?

Australia!

ERCOT, as of 2 p.m. today, raised the energy emergency to Level 2. Not good news, folks ... not good at all. Here is what it means:

http://www.kutnews.org/post/updated-factories-power-down-avoid-rolling-blackouts

Very not good!

[Shoshana]

Austin: Thurs Day 51 100+

Day 19 in a row.

104 at Mabry and it's 3pm. Record is 106.

[Ntxw]

The stage 2 power thing is terrible! I hope we avoid stage 3. You know it's such a waste we don't make the most out of all this heat and sun energy when it comes to times like this in terms of power.