Dwight Silverman

The SCW Q&A: Warmer sooner, strong signals, gray days, NOAA endangered, communication failures

March 26, 2025 at 12:00 pmMarch 27, 2025 at 7:05 am by Dwight Silverman

Welcome to the March SCW Q&A, where we tackle your questions about the weather, climate and how things work around here. You can submit your questions via the Contact link on the blog home page, or by leaving a question in the comments below.

Let’s get to it!

Q: Can you settle a bet for me? My friend and I have been arguing about whether it has been getting warmer sooner in Houston. He’s lived here 30 years, I’ve been here 20 years, so we both think we know what we’re talking about. I say it’s gotten warmer sooner, he says no. Do you have data to prove one of us is right? Preferably me?

A: We here at Space City Weather do not condone gambling, but in this instance, we will make every effort to ensure a victor is decided. So I guess the first way to go about this is to ask, “What is ‘warmer?'” What’s our definition? Are we talking first 80 degree day? 90 degree day? Last 40 degree night?

Let’s start with 80 degree days. The date of our first 80 degree day of the year has been steadily increasing over the last 50 years.

The top line shows the first day of 80 degree temperatures in Houston, and the 5-year moving average. It had been around February 18th in 1974, whereas today it’s closer to the last week of January. (NOAA)

In 1975, the average first 80 degree day would have occurred around February 18th. In 2025, that has moved up by over 3 weeks. For 90 degree days, it has similarly advanced forward, with the average first 90 degree day occurring around May 8th in the 1970s to mid-April today. Our last 40 degree night? In the 1970s it was April 28th. Today, it’s April 13th.

So, yes, reader. It’s not your imagination. Even if we look at this in several other ways, it has been getting warmer earlier in the year, especially in the last 30 to 50 years here in Houston.

–Matt

Q: I was wondering about long range weather forecasts. When you say there is a strong signal that a cold front or other weather event will happen 7 to 10 days out, what is the signal? Is it just a lot of data points that the models see as a pattern, maybe that it recognizes?

A: The signal is just our Spidey senses tingling. No, but seriously, this is a good question. When we’re looking out in more of the extended timeframe, we obviously don’t want to portray any degree of overconfidence in a possible forecast outcome. But not all 7 to 10 day forecasts are created equal. In some cases, you will get really good model agreement on an outcome. In other words, we’ll look at several key weather models like the GFS and European models and their ensemble means (when they’re run 30 to 50 different times with some tweaks and averaged together), and also some AI models now. If most of them agree on strong high pressure (warm and dry) or a very stormy pattern, we can say with some degree of confidence that there’s a “signal” for warmer or wetter weather. Or vice versa.

An example of a possibly high confidence signal in heavy rainfall for southwest Louisiana 5 days in advance; over 70% of European ensemble members forecasting 1″ or more of rainfall. (Pivotal Weather)

Now, there will be instances where confidence in an extended range forecast is even lower than usual.

An example of a lower confidence extended forecast where the European ensemble has a wide variance in the location of surface low pressure 8 days in advance in the Plains. (Polarwx.com)

For instance, placement of low pressure is one that is often challenging. We may know there’s a good signal for a storm at a certain timeframe, but we may not have any idea where that storm will emerge. From the image above, we would assume the Panhandle, but there is enough variability in exactly where that ends up that we have low confidence in any details.

So the bottom line here is that every extended forecast is somewhat unique and some periods will have slightly higher confidence than others. One other element that comes into play? Forecaster experience. I spent most of the last 15 years in energy trading environments working on day 10 and longer forecasts, and one of the most critical elements in trying to determine whether temperatures would trend one way or the other was just experience. You can’t track a specific metric to quantify that, but it counts for something.

–Matt

Q. Was this winter more grey than usual? It’s felt especially dreary the past couple months but I don’t know if it’s more cloudy days than usual!

A. Your intuition is good! Let’s look at December, January and February, which is a reasonable definition of winter in Houston. As part of its daily summary, the National Weather Service tabulates (on a scale of 1 to 10) whether a day was generally clear, partly cloudy, or cloudy. Here’s the total number of such days for this winter over the three-month period:

Clear: 19 days

Partly Cloudy: 39 days

Cloudy: 32 days

So by this tabulation, only 21 percent of days this winter were clear, or mostly clear, whereas 43 percent were partly cloudy, and 36 percent were cloudy. Historically, during winter, the split is just about even in Houston, with one-third of days being mostly clear, one-third partly cloudy, and one-third mostly cloudy. There is some subjectivity in measuring cloud cover across an entire area, so we can’t put too fine of a point on things. But yes, I think it’s safe to say this winter was more cloudy than normal in Houston this year But don’t worry, spring is often one of the sunniest times of year!

-Eric

Q: I am reading about mass firings at NOAA. Of course, this concerns me since we live in a hurricane prone area. What can I do as a concerned citizen? Is this situation going to affect your forecasting?

A: So there were a number of firings done to probational employees recently. Unfortunately that took out a number of experienced forecasters and researchers as well as a number of incoming younger talent. The whole thing is tied up in litigation, and some people have been hired back, others hired back and assigned to desk duty.

No matter how you view the issue, it’s really just a mess. In addition to this, a number of employees took the “fork in the road” buyout offer, and additional buyouts are expected to be in the pipeline. This has led to staffing reductions, including here in Houston where our meteorologist in charge, Jeff Evans recently departed. Between the cost-cutting and staffing reductions, we are beginning to see weather balloon data get cut now. On most days, you aren’t going to notice much or any of this. But a couple things are true: Over time, weather forecast quality is going to slowly degrade and during major events, particularly hurricanes, we may begin to notice more significant deviations from forecast because of glaring holes in the data. And this is in a world that assumes no further cuts which seems unlikely. Yes, this will impact our forecasting.

We have already written about our thoughts on keeping NOAA whole. Given the degree of success the NWS and NOAA have had in saving lives, protecting property and positively impacting the economy as a whole, the cost vs. benefit of cutting this agency may actually work against the implied goal of cutting government spending and reducing waste. In other words, these cuts would almost certainly be counterproductive and not work to achieve the stated goals of the current administration. I’m not just saying that as a result bias; the ROI of NOAA is actually remarkable and an example of a government agency being successful in ways that other government agencies should strive for. And in a place like Houston, which is the most disaster-prone region in America, we should be the ones screaming loudest to preserve it wholly.

So what can you do? Start by calling your congressional representative and explaining this. Feel free to cite our work on the matter. Educate and inform friends and family. Encourage others to speak up about it. Attend town halls with representatives. There are about eleventy billion priorities for both conservatives and liberals right now, but this is one of the rare ones that should enjoy strong bipartisan support and be non-controversial. If you need to cut debt, you don’t just take an axe to everything; you try to target your cuts to achieve the maximum cost savings with least collateral damage. And broad cuts to NOAA runs against that philosophy.

-Matt

Q. I followed your instructions from back in January about how to fix the problem of not getting notifications from your app on my iPhone, and it worked for a while. I deleted it, reinstalled it, and for a couple of weeks, notifications flowed – until they didn’t. I deleted again, reinstalled again, same thing. What’s going on?

Q. Recently, I quit getting your daily email with the latest blog posts. I’d been getting this regularly for a long time but it suddenly stopped. I re-entered my address in the field on the blog’s home page, but that didn’t help. Eventually I used another email address and that worked, but I’d really rather have your latest forecasts come to my regular address. Help!!!

A. There’s a great line from a classic Paul Newman film, 1967’s “Cool Hand Luke”: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” It fits for us, as two of the ways we get our forecasts out are failing to communicate with some of you. For one, a real fix may be imminent. For the other … not so much.

The app notifications problem turned out to be caused by an old version of the platform our developer, Hussain Abbasi, uses to build and maintain the app. It doesn’t play nice with some of the changes Apple has made in the way notifications work in iOS/ipadOS apps, and he originally planned to move to a completely different tool next year.

But Hussain recently found that the newest version of the development platform actually will do the job, so he is in the process of updating the app with that tool. While it’s not going to be the full rewrite of the app that he’d planned, it’s still taking a while. We hope to have something for you soon. In the meantime, deleting and reinstalling the app will get you a couple of weeks of notifications. Because we don’t require a login, this is relatively painless (but still annoying!).

The email problem is tougher. Being frugal, we have been using the email system built into WordPress. It’s free, as in beer, and in theory it allows for an unlimited number of recipients. Except we have discovered that there is indeed a limit, and we appear to have it hit at 24,700.

What appears to be happening is that every time someone new signs up to get SCW emails, someone else in the email database gets kicked off the list. Re-entering your old address in the home-page form doesn’t help, but putting in a new address should. Of course, you might be kicking someone else off the system when you do!

The fix for us is to switch to a different email system, which we’d have to pay for, and given the number of users we have and the frequency of our emails, that would be very, very expensive. We continue to look at solutions for this, but for now, your patience is appreciated!

-Dwight

The SCW Q&A: Dripping faucets, storm or no?, I-10 divider, inconsistent apps, whither La Niña?

January 31, 2025 at 10:42 amMarch 20, 2025 at 10:23 pm by Dwight Silverman

By the skin of our teeth, we’ve got the January SCW Q&A out the door. Many of the questions we got this month were – no surprise – inspired by our recent snowstorm.

Got a question of your own? Hit the Contact link in the blog’s header, or leave it in the comments below.

Q. The city asks people not to let faucets drip because it lowers water pressure. I understand there are ways to keep pipes warm, but how much does a dripping faucet actually help prevent pipes from bursting anyway? I’d rather have lower water pressure than broken pipes but wonder if letting faucets drip even helps much.

A. We get asked this question so often, and our standard response is: We are not plumbers. We are just not experts in this area. So we can offer some general thoughts, but you should really consult a plumber, and your water utility.

My best advice, as a homeowner in Houston, is to know where the main water shut-off switch is to your house, and if you’re concerned about freezing pipes, shut off the water supply and drain your pipes (i.e. run faucets until nothing comes out) before going to bed on nights when the temperature is expected to be below 25 degrees.

To drip or not to drip: That is the question. (Angelsharum / Wikimedia Commons)

As for dripping faucets, cities do not like that because it is not great for pump-based water systems. If too many people do it, it can reduce overall water pressure. If that gets too low, contaminants can get into the water supply, which can then result in a boil-water notice – and nobody wants that.

In unincorporated Harris County and those areas served by Municipal Utility Districts, it’s OK to drip pipes because water pressure there is generated by gravity – water towers and tanks – not pumps. During a freeze, your water utility will let you know what’s best.

So while homeowners may find comfort in dripping faucets, and many plumbers recommend it, be aware of what your utility is saying.

As my wife will attest, I am just about the least handy person on the face of the Earth when it comes to home maintenance.

– Eric

Q. Was it (January’s snow) really a “storm”? Traditionally, a storm is a violent event, typically bringing high winds, heavy precipitation, lightning, thunder, and other various tumults. While this event was unusual by Texas standards, it would barely have attracted notice in more northern locales. So my philosophically pedantic question is, does just being ‘unusual’ justify the use of the ‘storm’ moniker?

A. Ah yes, this is the kind of question we battle a lot in meteorology. Is it hot or warm? Cold or cool? A storm or just rain? And it gets to the heart of a more important question my colleague and friend Nick Lilja has asked, which is “What is severe weather, really?” Everyone has their own perceptions and definitions and to one-size-fits-all it is difficult.

But to the original question: The American Meteorological Society defines “storm” as a “disturbed state of Earth’s atmosphere, which can manifest itself in temperature, humidity, pressure, wind velocity, cloud cover, lightning, and precipitation.” Which seems to imply it’s OK to call our recent snow a “storm.” That is a really, really broad definition though. The AMS goes on to further define things. “Storms are organized disturbances that range in size from meters to a few kilometers (microscale, e.g., tornadoes), to a few to several hundred kilometers (mesoscale, e.g., mesoscale convective systems), to many hundreds of kilometers (synoptic, e.g., tropical and extratropical cyclones).” That still tracks with last week. So far so good.

Yep, looks like a storm to us. (Dwight Silverman photo)

The definition further goes on to read “Inclement and potentially destructive weather is often implied with a storm; threats can include heavy precipitation, flash flooding/river flooding, and high winds. From a local and special-interest viewpoint, a storm is a transient occurrence identified by its most destructive or spectacular aspect(s). In this manner we speak of rainstorms, windstorms, hailstorms, snowstorms, etc. Notable special cases are blizzards, ice storms, sandstorms, and dust storms.”

So from a meteorological and scientific point of view, last week’s snow was definitely a “storm.” Or more specifically a “winter storm.” But your mileage may vary. You may think a thunderstorm with frequent, intense lightning is very severe. By definition, lightning has nothing to do with a “severe thunderstorm,” which is strictly defined as a storm that produces one of one inch or larger hail, wind of 58 mph or stronger, or a tornado. Like any other definition in meteorology, there is a little vagueness to it from a human standpoint, and you’re not always wrong for thinking something is or isn’t a particular defined phenomenon.

– Matt

Q. When you say south of I-10, do you mean Galveston? Or does that mean anywhere directly below I-10 (Montrose, Downtown, Medical Center, etc).

A. Great question, and it’s one we get often. One of the challenges of forecasting in the Houston area is that it is big! We are covering, basically, an area from Sealy in the west to Beaumont in the east, from Conroe in the north down to Galveston by the Gulf. Interstate 10 is a key dividing line we often refer to because a) most people know where it is, and b) it very roughly separates “coastal” from “inland” areas.

The Houston area is big. How big? This big! (Apple Maps screenshot)

However, with that said, there are distinct differences between, say, Hobby Airport and Galveston Island. So yes, “south of Interstate 10” does include Galveston, but it also includes half of this huge metro area. When we want to call out the coast specifically we’ll say “coastal counties” i.e. Brazoria, Galveston, and Chambers counties. When we seek to highlight only areas very near the Gulf, which includes Galveston Island, we’ll sometimes say “immediate coast.”

By the same token, when we write something like “far inland areas” we mean areas along and north of Highway 105. And when we write “a place that sucks” we’re referring to Dallas.

– Eric

Q. Could you explain why there are so many variations among weather apps? For example, the AccuWeather app shows (last) Tuesday being having a high of 38 while almost all the TV weather is showing Tuesday not going above freezing. If all meteorologists pull from the same info why such a wide difference in the forecasts?

A. There are a couple reasons for this. I’ve been doing this 20 years, and one thing I’ve said is tried and true: Put 20 meteorologists in the same room with the same data, and you will get 20 different forecasts. And I don’t mean widely varying forecasts; just a lot of differences in specifics.

But there are a couple areas where broadcasters, apps, and even the data we see on websites differs. Let’s say the high temperature occurs at midnight because a cold front is pushing through, but the daytime temperature is going to be 10 degrees colder. What’s the high temperature that day? What matters to you planning your day? Broadcasters, sites like ours, and the NWS website will all illustrate this either explaining it or by using arrows to indicate that something is changing that day. Your app almost certainly will not.

The Space City Weather app, as seen on a Mac.

But more important than that, every app uses its own special sauce. In other words, they are all deriving their forecasts from raw model data provided by NOAA, the European Centre (ECMWF), etc. They then work it through some proprietary algorithm that they’ve developed that essentially “bias corrects” the model data. They could be using the last week of verification, the last month, etc. Every app is different in that regard. I saw a presentation recently at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in New Orleans from someone at AccuWeather that discussed this topic. One difference in their forecast is that their forecasters can actually go in and override data for a location or area if they have a strong conviction to disagree. Most apps do not come with that. I would assume The Weather Channel app does something similar.

So ultimately, each forecaster has their own opinion. For the apps, most of the “opinion” is bias correction of data, whereas for TV broadcasts or our comments, the opinion is based on our assessing the data and our past experiences. There will always be differences, but one reason I like our app is that it’s pulling forecasts straight from the National Weather Service. Their forecasts are usually solid and steady, and they’re derived locally. But as a consumer, I would always encourage you to shop around to get a sense of what everyone is thinking.

– Matt

Q. I have a question- where did La Niña (warm and dry) go? Where do you think we’ll be Spring and Summer of 2025 – La Niña, El Niño or neutral?

A. According to NOAA’s most recent outlook, from late January, La Niña conditions are still present in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Most modeling indicates that La Niña will persist through the spring before transitioning to neutral conditions. As for what happens after that, well, it’s kind of a crapshoot. Most of the guidance indicates neutral conditions lasting into the summer (and the Atlantic hurricane season). However, as we like to say here on Space City Weather, we’ll see.

I think you may be asking why have we not had a warmer and drier winter, which is typical during La Niña? To which I would say let’s see where the average temperature and rainfall end up at the end of February. I think it’s quite possible we end this winter with warmer than normal temperatures and near normal precipitation, which would be consistent with what one expects from La Niña. We’ll be sure to report back on that at the end of winter about a month from now.

– Eric

Pix or it didn’t happen: Houston gets a snow day!

January 21, 2025 at 5:13 pmJanuary 21, 2025 at 5:26 pm by Dwight Silverman

Historic snowfalls don’t occur often in Houston, so when they do you want to capture memories of them. With that in mind, we’re offering up images posted to our feeds on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, along with others sent directly to us. For videos check our #housnow2025 Instagram story.

Snowmen were popular projects, but how successful you were depended on how much fell in your neighborhood. (Cindi Robinson Zamora)

It helps to have “Houston” in your snow picture, for the unbelievers out there, even if you live in Pearland. (Barbara Leon)

Some snowmen are less, um, dynamic. More chill, so to speak. (Chachi Ameller)

Parks were popular, particularly those with hills. The hill at Miller Outdoor Theater was perfect for improvised snowboarding. (Rakesh Agrawal)

Stryker and his humans are cold but happy. (Melanie Boyer)

The more tropical the look, the more surreal the snow photos get. Lake Houston! (Sarah Alderman)

Back in the city, snows makes the Heights looks peaceful. (James Michael Carlen)

Even more serene: League City. (Lily Joy Berger)

South Sheperd near Vermont got slushy. (Dwight Silverman)

This palm tree near Shepherd at Welch was nearly killed off by the 2021 deep freeze but came roaring back. Will it survive 2025? (Dwight Silverman)

As Matt wrote in his post earlier today, we’ll get official numbers from National Weather Service tomorrow, but based on what we’ve seen in our social feeds, the amount that fell was all over the map. But in the absence of formal numbers, we’ll crowdsource some measures posted by folks sticking rulers in the snow. It’s a trend!

3.5″ in Midtown (Katie Prentice / Facebook)

Temperatures are supposed to plummet again tonight, causing what’s melted Tuesday afternoon to freeze as ice. That will make travel even more hazardous than it was this morning. We’ll have an update on what comes next later tonight.

Hey Apple users: Your long national notification nightmare is (hopefully) over. Do this.

January 9, 2025 at 10:00 amJanuary 9, 2025 at 10:47 am by Dwight Silverman

For quite a while now, a growing number of people who have the Space City Weather app on their iPhones, iPads and Macs have stopped getting notifications. (Android users were not having the same problem.) We mentioned this in last month’s SCW Q&A post, in which we admitted our bafflement..

Hussain Abbasi, our developer, has been banging his head against his monitor, trying to figure this out. The code for the app was doing what it was supposed to do, he said. He tried tweaks to the tool we use to send app notifications, without success. He took his time looking at different combinations of devices and operating system versions. Nothing he tried put an end to our frustration and your annoyance at not being alerted when a new item was posted.

But last week, Hussain noticed posts in user forums on the web indicating that other apps were having the same problem. And he learned that, with the release of iOS/iPadOS 18, Apple had made a change in the way notifications are handled. Our app’s code was doing what it was supposed to do, but things were different on Apple’s end.

Which brings us to a simple fix.

First, if you are no longer getting notifications from the SCW app on your Apple device, make sure you have notifications turned on. Tap the same 3-line menu you’d use to change cities, tap the gear icon upper right of the city picker, then choose Notifications. Make sure the toggle buttons for the notification types you want are on.

Here’s the Notifications setting page for the SCW app. Turn on all the alerts, except for Evacuate Katy. Whatever you do, don’t even try to turn that on.

If notifications are turned on and you haven’t been getting them, do this: Delete the app and reinstall it from the App Store. Apparently this re-registers it with Apple, and adopts the changes to the notification system.

If you have an iPhone, iPad or Mac with the app installed and you are still getting notifications, you need do nothing. However, if they suddenly stop coming, you now know what to do!

We have tested this with our own devices and it seems to work. But if for some reason it doesn’t work for you, make sure you have in place the latest version of your device’s operating system and that app notifications are turned on. Update your device if needed. Then try deleting the app, restarting the device, then reinstalling the app.

And if that doesn’t work, send us details from the Feedback feature, also in the SCW app’s settings. As always, thanks for reading Space City Weather and using our app! And to everyone who sent in Feedback reports about this issue, we appreciate you. They were a big help.

Update: Hey, look! It works!