For most of us running the upcoming Houston marathon on January 15th we had our last, semi-long run this past weekend, and it’s time to taper down to the main event. We’ve trained. We’ve worked hard. And now we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature. So let’s discuss what’s in store.
When it comes to forecasting weather conditions nearly two weeks out it’s important to remember that forecast models have limited accuracy after about 10 days. Perhaps the best way to gauge conditions from this far out is to look at the ensemble runs of global forecast models. That is, the GFS and European models are each run about 50 different times with slightly different starting conditions. This gives a range of outcomes, and from looking at all of these ensemble runs we can get some probabilities on conditions.
(Space City Weather is sponsored by Westbury Christian School for this month)
For runners the news at this point is not good. Looking at the 00z run of the European model, more than 80 percent of the ensemble members show warmer than normal conditions, and probably about 50 percent of them show lows in the mid-50s or higher. The GFS model is a little bit cooler, with a colder start to the day and only about a 30 percent chance of a high temperature exceeding 70 degrees.
As is often the case, the forecast models are struggling with the push and pull of cold fronts and warm fronts during the winter season along the Gulf coast. At this point it appears as though most of the European models are waiting until the Monday or Tuesday after the marathon to drag a cold front through. This far out the timing could be way off, so I wouldn’t be too concerned about the marathon forecast—yet.
Most likely: Start time temperatures starting in the 50s, rising into the 60s
Next most likely: Start time temperatures in the 60s, rising into the 70s
Less likely: A cold race day, with temperatures in the 40s
Confidence: Low
Please oh please let it be just like last year (40s all the way through)! Next best would be 50s-60s and not humid ?
Agree 100 percent.
I was commenting on the lack of cold weather in recent Houston winters. I know this has been a nationwide occurrence, but since I live in the Houston area, I’ll throw out a few examples. Even before IAH, 22 miles north of Hobby which was the recording station for a very long time for Houston, then before Hobby – like from 1889 until 1945 it was Houston Downtown. Anyway, since 1970, IAH has been the official recording station, and almost always runs on average 2 or 3 degrees colder than Hobby or downtown during the winter nights. Still, if one looks up the winter temperatures even before IAH was the official station and averaged them all up, you would come out with a temperature of <20 on average once every two years or so. We had our hot periods, from the ice storm and record cold of January/Feb. 1951 until January 1962 – 10 years we did not fall below 20 in the very warm and drought-ridden decade of the 1950's. From 1918 to 1928, we did not fall below 20 degrees, these being our longest periods, and many of those years went to 22 or 21, when the official weather station was at the warmer sites of downtown or Hobby not IAH.
It will have been 21 years on the 8th since we have been below 20, and that is just barely, a 19 on Jan. 8th, 1996, I remember that morning, and it lasted only for a few minutes, and we were back in the 70's two days later. In reality, one has to go back to December of 1989 – some 27 years to find some truly arctic air to have hit Houston, when even Hobby went down into the single digets- yes, on Dec. 23, 1989, Hobby sunk to 9 degrees, and IAH fell to 7 degrees, College Station was at 2, even the Island was 14. This was the coldest temperature in Houston since 5 degrees was reported at downtown January 18th, 1930, some 50 years earlier. Imagine now if Hobby were to fall to 5 degrees from zero? Another period in which Houston fell into the single numbers was in Feb. of 1899 where we hit 6 on successive nights, and Dallas went to -8 below zero. It does not make sense that the lowest temperature in the last 20 years now has just been 21 degrees as we have more than doubled our longest string of above 20 degree temperatures. By the way, I remember on Dec. 22nd 1989 the front came thru at midnight, so the high for the day was then, and it was in the upper 20's. It has fallen to the low teens area wide that morning, still in the mid teens at lunch and most areas recovered to around 19 to 22 for the afternoon in the city of Houston. So, you could say our high that afternoon was just as cold as our coldest low was since 1996, 21 years ago. For records sake, our coldest high temperature was set in 1899 of 20 degrees.
We have broken our all-time record high temperature twice in just the span of 11 years 0f 109 degrees – again, IAH is farther inland that downtown or Hobby, but doing a scan of both those stations that day, even Hobby reached 108, which would have been the all-time hottest ever for that location, and the downtown location on Sept. 4th, 2000 and Aug. 27th, 2011 respectively.
Forecast looks increasingly grim for the Race with morning temperatures race start near 67F. Last year I did the full marathon for the first time ever and was rewarded with great weather, this year I’m pretty happy that I’m just doing the half based on the current forecast!