Houston recorded a staggering 24.84 inches of rain in March, April and May at Bush Intercontinental Airport. That three month total for spring ranks second for this period in the city’s history all time—behind only last year with its 26.61 inches.
Clearly this has caused widespread flooding problems, particularly north of Harris County, along Spring and Cypress creeks, as well as to the west, along the entire Brazos River watershed, which is presently experiencing historic flooding. And the misery is not over, with more heavy rain likely from Thursday through Saturday or Sunday.
But the clouds have had one silver lining—temperatures. May ended with an average temperature of 74.5 degrees, which is 2.4 degrees below normal. That’s not among the 10 coldest Mays on record for the city, and we weren’t going to reach that list because the month had only one real cool front, back during the first week when temperatures fell into the 50s for a few nights. Instead we mostly had cooler days because of the clouds and the rains. The average high was 83.1 degrees, and amazingly we still haven’t had a 90-degree day in 2016.
Houston hasn’t gone this late into the calendar year without hitting 90 degrees since 1970. We’re now a month late for our first one, and because we’re not going to hit that mark today, this year now ranks as the 10th latest we’ve gone into a year without a 90-degree day.
If the forecast for gray and intermittently rainy days holds, it seems likely we will extend the streak through at least Saturday (June 4th). By early next week I believe we’re going to see more sunshine, which in turn will warm us up. (The latest forecast from the European model brings the first 90-degree day next Wednesday). In any case, the rain has made for an easy slide into the summer heat, which surely will be upon us soon.
Prior to 1970, Houston waited until June to record its first 90* day about 12% of the time.
In the 47 years since the official weather station was moved to IAH (and farther away from the moderating effects of the Gulf of Mexico), there have only seen two years where Houston got to wait until June to reach 90*. Looks like site location is a major driver here.
It’s certainly part of the reason, I agree.
FYI – The site seems to have caching issues. When I open the front page of the site in Chrome (whether on my Android or my Windows 7 desktop), it does not update the list of posts – it shows the posts from the most recent time I visited the site. It only shows the latest posts when I do a force reload.
Any suggestions for how to fix this on our end?