Drought, floods made 2018 a wild year in weather for Texas

Jan. 04--From drought to floods to powerful hailstorms, 2018 was a remarkable year in Texas weather.

In particular, meteorologists agree that the torrential September and October rainfall in Central Texas, which caused unprecedented flooding along the Colorado River, will go down as the state's most notable weather event last year.

It was a story that dominated news headlines for at least two weeks in October, when flooding rains caused Lake Travis to swell to near-record levels. The water got so muddied that treatment plants weren't able to filter it quick enough, prompting a six-day boil water notice for Austin Water customers, the first in its history.

In total, 15.7 inches of rain fell in the Austin area in September and October, making that two-month period the seventh-wettest ever recorded in the city.

"The most unusual contributing factor was the record number of named storms in the east Pacific," state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said. "Texas tends to think of all our hurricane weather coming from the Atlantic Ocean, but a lot of the storms in the east Pacific make landfall in Mexico, and a lot of their moisture makes landfall in Texas and contributes to rainfall in our state."

September and October were the fourth- and third-wettest months on record in the state, respectively.

The heavy rainfall all but washed away the intense drought that had concerned Texas farmers and ranchers over the summer, most notably in the Panhandle region, where severe drought conditions crippled the year's wheat crop, causing Central Texas cattle ranchers to suffer in the winter, Nielsen-Gammon said.

By August, four-fifths of the state was experiencing some kind of drought.

The dry conditions caused temperatures to soar in a ripple effect, producing a hot summer, especially in urban centers.

"When you don't have a lot of rainfall, the temperatures can heat up quicker than they normally would," National Weather Service meteorologist Jason Runyen said.

Statewide, the summer went down as the fifth-warmest on record.

For Austin, it was the third-warmest, with an average temperature of 87.6 degrees, significantly higher than the average summer temperature of 84.3 degrees.

"Urban areas have been warming faster than the rest of the state due to the urban heat island effect," Nielsen-Gammon said of the tendency for temperatures to rise in urban centers due to higher energy usage and development. "That is probably contributing to Austin seeing hot temperatures closer to records than the rest of the state, being it's an urban area and it is growing rapidly."

Austin in 2018 recorded 52 days when temperatures reached 100 degrees or higher. That included a stretch of 16 consecutive triple-digit days in late August.

Austin's hottest day was July 23, when temperatures at Camp Mabry, the city's main weather station, reached 110 degrees. The highest temperature ever recorded in the city was 112 degrees, both in 2000 and 2011, the weather service said.

Overall, the average temperature in Austin last year was 70.4 degrees, making it the 13th-warmest year on record, tied with 1954. That's not nearly as hot as 2017, the hottest year ever recorded in Austin, when the average temperature was 72.1 degrees.

The most notable thing for Texas in 2018, according to Nielsen-Gammon, was the hurricane season. While it was a slightly more active hurricane season than normal, with 15 named storms in the Atlantic Ocean, there was not a single named storm in the western Gulf of Mexico near Texas.

"We managed to do pretty well in that regard," Nielsen-Gammon said.

A powerful storm carrying baseball-sized hail did cause significant damage to parts of North Texas in June, resulting in about $500 million in insured losses, according to the Insurance Council of Texas. However, council spokesman Mark Hanna said the state saw significantly fewer tornadoes and damaging hailstorms than it has in recent years.

And while the floods in October did cause about $30 million in insured losses to Central Texans, that's nothing compared with the $20 billion in damages incurred from Hurricane Harvey in 2017, he said.

"We have had some rough years," Hanna said. "2018 was a bit of a break for us."

The year also closed out with no surprising winter snowfalls in Central Texas, unlike in 2017 when flurries blanketed Austin twice in December.

However, meteorologists say that could change in early 2019. So stay tuned.

___

(c)2019 Austin American-Statesman, Texas

Visit Austin American-Statesman, Texas at www.statesman.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.