August 2010: The Warmest Ever...on record*

The average temperature last month was 87.7° which makes it the warmest August on record and the warmest month on record at Bush Intercontinental Airport. The previous record was set in July 1980 and August 1962 when the average temperature was 87.5°.  We beat the old record by a mere 2/10ths of a degree. 

The average temperature combines both the high and low temperatures. So let's break it down even more. The average high temperature in August 2010 was 97.6°, which is 4.1° above normal. There were only two days when the high temperature was less than 95°. The average low in Houston was 77.9°, which is 4.9° warmer than usual.

Higher than normal dew points kept us from cooling off at night and produced a dangerously high heat index.  On August 14, the heat index hit 114°. Heat Advisories were in effect for about half of the month.

In Galveston, August 2010 was the second warmest on record with an average temperature (highs and lows combined) of 87.4°.  That's 2.9° warmer than normal. The hottest month on record in Galveston was August 2005 when the average temperature was 86.6°.

 

 * The phrase "on record" is important because local weather observations only date back to 1889.  Furthermore, over that time the official thermometer for Houston has been moved several times before being installed at Bush Intercontinental Airport in June 1969.

Cool front should drop the temps and maybe some rain, too

A weak cool front will produce some clouds and a few isolated showers this weekend. But it won't be enough to end the developing drought.

Soil conditions are abnormally dry all over southeast Texas thanks to a lack of widespread, soaking showers.  Parts of east Texas are already reporting moderate drought conditions.  2.47" of rain fell in Houston back on April 18, but most neighborhoods got much less.  Galveston, for example, only picked up .02" of rain that day. And no substantial rain has fallen since then.

On the other hand, this is Mother's Day weekend and we don't want Mom to get wet, do we?

With only a few showers in the forecast, most of us will stay dry but the sky will be mostly cloudy, as shown by our exclusive FutureTrack to the right.

The cool front will also drop the temperatures and the humidity.  We should be about 10° cooler on Saturday, with highs only in the low 80s. 

Then Sunday, the winds turn in from the southeast again and the humidity starts to climb. While Mother's Day might start off cool, it will get warm and muggy again by late afternoon.

Don't ask TV weathercasters about global warming

If you're a regular reader of this blog you know I try and cover both sides of the great global warming debate.  The one thing you haven't read here yet is where I stand on the issue.  And you won't today.

Last week I wrote about a new survey that examines the opinions of TV weathercasters about global warming. Turns out many of the folks delivering the evening forecast believe global warming is natural, not man-made and  some even think it's a scam.

Over the last few days, the survey has been the subject of several newspaper articles and was ridiculed last night on Comedy Central's, "The Colbert Report."

I took the survey back in January. I don't remember any questions about educational background or work experience.  The results don't indicate how many who took the survey have a degree in meteorology or a degree in climatology or a degree in art.  There's no way to tell if some worked in the state climatology office, the National Weather Service or McDonald's before getting a job in TV.

Assuming most of those who took the survey have a degree in meteorology, chances are they only took one or maybe two classes in climatology. To use an old cliche, "They know enough to be dangerous."  And that I believe is the problem with this survey and with TV weather folks telling viewers what they think, not what they know, about global warming.

I wouldn't ask my dentist about my gallbladder and  you shouldn't ask a meteorologist about climatology.

The two subjects are similar but different. Meteorologists study short term weather changes. The data  explains what's happening now or the recent past.  The high-resolution computer models forecast atmospheric changes in great detail up to two weeks in advance.  Climatologists examine weather trends over a long period of time, hundreds and thousands of years. The data is course, oftentimes extracted through unusual means like tree rings and ice core samples. The forecast models are designed to recreate past conditions as well as future trends.  To truly be an "expert" in one or the other, you should probably take more than one or two classes.

Unfortunately, the American Meteorological Society perpetuates the myth that TV weathercasters can become the "Station Scientist." A program launched a few years ago encourages the membership to know a little about a subject they might be asked to talk about on-air by watching webcasts. Some education is better than no education, but watching a few online lectures doesn't make you a "scientist" and doesn't make you an "expert."

So go ahead and ask me about tomorrow's weather and I'll freely tell you what I know. Ask me about earthquakes and I'll tell you to check with the seismologists at Rice University. Ask me about global warming and I'll tell you to talk to a climatologist or someone who has extensively studied climate change.  And that's not your local TV weatherman.

Survey of TV Meteorologists on Climate Change

More than half of the meteorologists working on TV believe global warming is happening. But most of them attribute that warming to natural changes in the environment, according to a new survey conducted by George Mason University.

571 members of the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association answered the poll between January and February 2010.  The results indicate 54% believe global warming is real, 25% said it's not happening and 21% still don't know for sure.

Assuming global warming is happening, only 31% said human activities were the cause while 63% indicated the warming is part of natural process.

The term "scientific consensus" is used a lot when discussing climate change, but the majority (61%) of TV weathercasters think there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether global warming is real.

Only 44% indicated they trust the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change even though the AMS and others point to the IPCC as an empirical source on climate change. Opinions might have been swayed by the recent admission by the IPCC that some of their data is not accurate.

Instead of the IPCC, more than 80% of TV weathercasters turn to their state climatologists for honest information about global warming. NOAA and the National Weather Service are also trusted sources. Not surprisingly, politicians, religious leaders and other mainstream news media ranked the lowest.

48% of TV meteorologists say global warming hasn't affected local weather patterns. But the issue is a concern for the public; 87% indicated the subject comes up while speaking to community groups.

About a third of the respondents said they've discussed climate change on blogs and during daily weathercasts. 79% said stories about climate change should include a balance of opinions, similar to how politics and other social issues are covered.

You can read the full report here.

The warmest decade on record!

Worldwide, the years 2000-2009 were the warmest on record.  The World Meteorological Organization says, "The decade of the 2000s was warmer than the decade spanning the 1990s, which in turn was warmer than the 1980s."

The graph above shows a plot of worldwide temperatures over the last 160 years. The red line shows data analyzed by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, the blue line is from NASA's GISS dataset and the black line represents data from the United Kingdoms' Hadley Center and Climate Research Unit.

Temperature data was collected at more than 10,000 land-base weather stations, 3,000 aircraft observations, 1,000 upper-air stations and 1,000 ships and nearly 70 satellites.

Additionally, the WMO says preliminary data shows the year 2009 was one of the warmest on record.  Most continents were significantly warmer than normal last year, except for North America which includes the U.S., of course.

Charting Houston's winter temperatures

The graph above charts the average winter temperature in Houston. The thin black line is the 10-year average.  You can see from the data, the warmest winter on record was 1949-50 when the average temperature was 60.8°. Temperatures averaged 46.6° during the winter of 1977-78, the coldest on record. It's interesting to see that we rarely have two cold winter or warm winters in a row and it's not uncommon for us to go from one extreme to the other.

The data shows our winters tended to be warmer between 1905-1957, then we started trending down from 1958-1984. We were warmed again between 1985-1999. It's impossible to say whether this winter is a signal that we're transitioning into another cool period or if it's just a outlier within a series of warm years.

Two things about the data you should know: there is data missing for several years in the late 1880s and the official weather observation site for Houston was moved from downtown to Bush Intercontinental Airport in 1969.

Winter weather review: one of the coldest on record

The winter of 2009-2010 will go down as one of the coldest on record in the Houston-Galveston area.

Between December 1 and February 28, the average temperature at Bush Intercontinental Airport was 49.2° which is 4.4° colder than normal.  This was the sixth coldest winter on record and the coldest since 1983-84.

At Scholes Airport in Galveston, the temperatures averaged 6.1° colder than normal. The average temp on the island was 51.2° over the same three month period. This winter was the fifth coldest on record and the coldest since 1977-78.

The first cold front of the season arrived on December first, and three days later brought us the earliest snow on record. Temperatures were colder than normal every day in December except for four days. We dropped into the teens and low 20s in early January, the coldest weather in 14 years. But then we thawed out for nearly two weeks during the second half of the month. February hit us hard with temperatures colder than normal for all but two days.

The National Weather Service office in League City maintains the climate records for this area.

Houston Cooling vs. Global Warming

Last week, while temperatures were dropping well below freezing for the first time in nearly 20 years, many folks posted comments on our Facebook and Twitter pages wondering how it could be so cold during this period of climate change.

Theresa wrote, "Don't you just love global warming?"

Dollie added, "Explain THAT Al Gore!"

I gently reminded them that seven months ago we were sweating with a 113-degree heat index. High temperatures hit one hundred degrees no fewer than 17 times last summer.

There's an old saying, "Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get."

We expect Houston to be hot and humid. Obviously, it's not always like that.  The climate describes the long-term average conditions of an area; the weather describes the short-term atmospheric changes which over time, determine the climate.  It doesn't always rain in Seattle. The weather is not always windy in Chicago. It rains in the desert. And sometimes it's cold and dry in Houston.

NASA explains on their website, "Weather can change from minute-to-minute." Climate changes over a period of many years.

In my experience, the atmosphere behaves like a giant pendulum, swinging back and forth between weather extremes on either end.  Last June was very hot. This January is very cold. We're wet one week, dry the next. And so it goes, back and forth. That's why I enjoy weather forecasting; it's different every day, every week, sometimes every minute.

Regardless of whether or not you believe in global warming and climate change, last week's time in the deep freeze doesn't prove anything. We didn't set any new record lows. It's actually been colder in Houston!

Extremely cold weather is part of our climate story.

2009 brought extreme weather to southeast Texas

We began the year 2009 with a drought which actually started to develop in the fall of 2008.  Widespread, soaking showers didn't return until April, when two separate weather systems dumped heavy rain and caused flash flooding. The thirsty ground easily soaked up the water, bringing an end to the drought.

We turned up the heat during the summer. The high temperature was 100° or hotter seventeen times between June, July and August. We hit 104° on June 24 and 26, the hottest it has ever been in June and just five degrees shy of the all-time hottest temperature ever recorded in Houston. Overall, the summer of 2009 was the second hottest on record!

The heat wave finally broke in early September when the first of many cool fronts brought our temperatures down to more seasonable levels.  A series of fronts in October brought more heavy rain, easing the drought conditions which started to re-develop during the summer.

No tropical weather systems tracked toward southeast Texas during the year 2009. But we did have a few severe weather events. Severe thunderstorms on March 27 produced a small tornado in Cleveland and pummeled the ground with baseball size hail. A waterspout moved ashore in Galveston on August 30 and produced minor damage along the Seawall. A few weeks before that, a tornado touched down in Beaumont.

The biggest weather event for many happened late in the year. A blast of cold air brought some snow to southeast Texas on December 4. It was the perfect ending to a weatherful year.

Strong Front Brings Storms Tonight, Cold for Christmas

Evening Update:

A new tornado watch now includes all of southeast Texas and expires at 6AM or when the front pushes through.  The atmosphere is becoming increasingly unstable in advance of a strong upper level storm pushing our way from west Texas.  Winds in the upper atmosphere are topping 140 mph, and as these strong winds move overhead, the threat of severe storms will increase.  A squall line should develop along or just ahead of the front, and the severe threat will transition from isolated tornadoes to damaging straight line winds. 

You can track the storms on our website with our interactive street-level mapping and Live Mega Doppler 13 HD. 

Previous Discussion Follows:

While a blizzard rages in the plains, severe storms are set to move into Houston overnight.  It's all part of a strong cold front that will put a chill in the air for Christmas.

A tornado watch is in effect until 9PM starting just north of Houston and stretching all the way past Dallas/Fort Worth into Oklahoma.  So if you're traveling up I-45 or Highway 59 tonight, be careful!  Strong southerly winds are blowing in warm, unstable air, and strong upper level winds could cause storms to start rotating.  If a rotating storm is picked up on radar, tornado warnings will likely be issued.

The tornado watch does not include Houston, but we're not in the clear yet from stormy weather.  A strong cold front will push through tonight, and a squall line is likely to race overhead in the hours after midnight.  Our exclusive FutureTrack computer model shows the squall line rolling into Houston around 3AM.  Winds behind the front will blow strongly out of the northwest with some wind gusts on Christmas Eve approaching 40 mph!

This front opens the door to some chilly weather that will hang around for the rest of the year!  Given the pattern, there is a chance that between Christmas and the New Year we'll see wintry precipitation fall somewhere in Texas. 

We all know that snow is rare here in Houston.  Multiple snowfalls in the same winter are even rarer.  Interestingly enough, whenever we've had multiple snowfalls in the same winter, the second snowfall has occurred almost exactly a month after the first.  Take a look at the 5 winters on record with multiple snowfalls:

1. 12/28/1925 and 1/26/1926
2. 1/14/1963 and 2/12/1963
3. 1/11/1973 and 2/9/1973
4. 1/19/1981 and 2/11/1981
5. 1/2/1985 and 2/1/1985

If it snows deep into the heart of Texas next week, history says it would be right on schedule.