If you head out to Washington County, you’ll quickly notice the brown, crispy fields. This is a huge difference from the start of summer when we had full ponds and green fields.
In fact, our weather has done a 180° with rainfall. Although we started the summer very wet, it’s now been weeks since many have seen any significant rainfall.
ASK 2: How much rain does it take for us to get out of a drought?
In Houston, our last measurable rainfall was on September 24th (24 days ago) but our last significant rainfall (over a quarter inch) was on September 6th (42 days).
It is no surprise that that drought monitor this week included a moderate drought for all of SE Texas. You’ll notice even Galveston is considered abnormally dry.
Every year NOAA puts out its winter outlook, and this year’s outlook does not look good for our SE Texas drought. There is a 40-60% chance of seeing below-normal precipitation. This is in consensus with our WeatherBELL winter outlook which also shows all of SE Texas with below-normal rainfall.
Unfortunately, this means we will likely see our drought worsen in the coming weeks and months.
NOAA also includes a temperature forecast, and for SE Texas we are expected to be warmer than average. There is a 70-80% chance that we will see temperatures above average. This can actually make our drought even worse. When we have higher temperatures, we see more evaporation which dries out our ground and leads to droughts worsening quicker.
The WeatherBELL winter outlook is in consensus with NOAA, suggesting we will be 3° warmer than average during the winter months.
So what does this mean? There is no rainfall in the 10-day forecast. The burn bans across SE Texas are going nowhere. Right now there are no water restrictions, but this could absolutely change in the coming weeks. I know for my family in Washington County, we’re praying for rainfall.
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