Hurricanes and Snowstorms

Almost a half-foot of snow fell in parts of southeast Texas Wednesday evening.

The heavy, wet snow covered the yards and roads across eastern Harris County, Chambers and Liberty Counties. Less snow fell west of Houston because there was more rain in the precipitation than snow. But when the low pressure reached Houston it strengthened and pulled down more cold air aloft causing the rain to change completely to snow just east of downtown. (The three inches of snow in Brenham and Navasota fell Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning while the storm was still in central Texas.)

It is rare for snow to fall in southeast Texas. And despite all the tropical systems we track,  it is also rare for a hurricane to make a direct landfall along our coast.

Yet, if you look at the weather records it seems that every time a big hurricane hits the Houston-Galveston area it snows during the month of December following the hurricane. It snowed in southeast Texas after Hurricane Carla in 1961, after Alicia in 1983 and after Jerry in 1989. Now we can add Hurricane Ike to the list as well. Furthermore, the December following Hurricane Jerry in 1989 was the coldest on record! The second coldest December on record was in 1983, following Hurricane Alicia.

Is there a connection between southeast Texas hurricanes and snowstorms?  I don't know.  But I do know there are larger patterns within the atmosphere that we don't completely understand. If someone had a lot of time and a lot of money, this would be an interesting weather connection to investigate.

True, it has snowed at times when we didn't have a hurricane. It snowed in December 2004, for example, and no hurricane made landfall that previous summer. But it does seem that the weather patterns that steer hurricanes our way might also steer cold air this way.

Comments

[mikey.d]

it just that we got snow no pattern

[Brian]

Wow so what your saying is, these patterns are shaping up and looking like they may go in some cycle from 1961, i bet it's even done this for years beyond 1961.

makes one wonder if global warming is a LIE!

Why such a rush on the whole global warming thing now that they "must" do something now now now, if in fact we haven't a CLUE as to what these cycles do and in fact are. In fact making fun of the guy in the video on his weather report, you guys don't understand. YOU all sound like him to us!

Then to top it off you all think the sun plays no part in earth weather. lol HELLO! How much do you guys get paid? Because I want a job where i just guess at everything lie about the stuff i don't know and force everyone into following a liberal agenda of Global Controlling, Oh I'm sorry. Global Warming... yup because that's what the people's emotions are gonna be doing when everyone figures this whole scam out!

[J.P.]

The correlation between cold winters and hurricanes I believe is more of a physics equation than a weather pattern correlation. Since energy cannot be destroyed it must be transformed. When there is significant storm activity in the gulf the stored energy in the gulf is expended in the storms. The cold fronts descending on us do not have the warmth of the gulf to defend us. When the gulf is calm during the summer the stored energy sets up a kind of wall that absorbs the cold from the fronts, usually resulting in a warmer wetter winter. You should probably check the correlation between the calm summer seasons and the amount of rainfall. I would be willing to bet the thunderstorms with the passing fronts are more significant in the calmer summer seasons too.

[Dave]

Sounds interesting....but I think the snow in Houston is a 4 year occurrence, which could explain the snow in 2004. Ironically, we've had a leap year, a summer olympic game, and a presidential election all in one year also.