Adam Russell
Texas can expect some wet weather heading into Valentine’s Day and a continuation of a mild winter that has seen some of the warmest winter temperatures since the Dust Bowl.
The rain could mean a short-term reprieve for areas that need moisture following the warmest winter months for Texas in decades.
Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, in the Texas A&M University department of atmospheric sciences in College Station and the state’s climatologist, says expectations going into winter were for weather conditions to be warmer and drier than average throughout the season.
He says records show it was the warmest November through January for Texas since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. A few stations in the lower Rio Grande Valley recorded temperatures as high as 96 degrees in January. Many stations in that region and along the coast never recorded a low daily temperature below 70 degrees throughout the month.
COLD SNAP
On the cold side, temperatures did reach minus 9 degrees in the Panhandle at Dalhart, but cold fronts were short-lived and intermittent for much of the state.
Rainfall has been a mixed bag for Texas since November, Nielsen-Gammon says. Most of West Texas received higher-than-normal rainfall amounts, while North Central Texas and surrounding areas received below-normal rainfall.
Nielsen-Gammon does expect chances of wet weather for most of the state starting over the weekend. The rains should pacify concerns about wildfires as the state heads into the season when dead foliage and grass can become dangerous fuel for fires when mixed with high winds and a spark.
“We haven’t seen any substantial drought developing except maybe in the Corpus Christi area, but there have been lingering drought conditions in parts of the state from early fall,” he says.
Nielsen-Gammon also expects temperatures to fall briefly in the near future.
There may be a brief cool front later this week, with a slow-moving cold front expected for the beginning of next week, he says.
“We could see a front slowly creeping across Texas with decent blasts of cold air, especially in North Texas. We’ll just have to see how far that cold air makes it.”
But he does expect fairly warmer patterns to prevail and to keep temperatures at or above average.
“I just don’t see any prolonged cool weather at this point,” he says.