Will in Sniow Again in Houston
Every bit we near the end of October it's time to wait ahead to the coming winter. While seasonal forecasting is far from perfect, it does have some predictive value. And we know that some people are on border about winter given the terrible Valentine's Twenty-four hours freeze the region endured eight months agone. And so Matt and I are putting together an actress-long outlook with several parts.
As a special treat, we're also going to finally answer the question we get asked about a hundred times a yr: Do landfalling hurricanes in Houston hateful we're going to see snow during the subsequent winter?
Winter outlook
For the purposes of this post, we're defining winter as the period of Dec through February. In brusque: our region of Texas should see somewhat warmer than normal temperatures, and about- or slightly below normal levels of precipitation.
Essentially, the NOAA winter forecast predicts above normal temperatures for almost of the Usa, and particularly southern and eastern parts of the state. In terms of precipitation, we tin expect slightly drier than normal atmospheric condition for the winter months in Houston and much of Texas. It looks similar information technology could be a snowy winter in the Corking Lakes region.
The driving factor behind these predicitons is the expected onset of another La Niña pattern this winter.
What does La Niña hateful for this winter?
Forecasters are now confident that a moderate La Niña pattern volition develop and persist through the wintertime of 2021-2022. A La Niña event occurs when sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Sea absurd below normal levels. This tends to have fairly predictable effects for North America during the winter months.
Assuming a moderate La Niña develops, this typically places the jet stream a chip further north across the United States than normal. This positioning tends to bring fewer storms and fronts into Texas during the winter months, and accordingly nosotros would look a Texas wintertime to exist warmer and slightly drier than normal.
That, of form, is the typical pattern. Precipitous-eyed readers may recall that a La Niña pattern was also in identify during last winter. So how, exactly, should we feel about that in the context of some other super hard freeze this coming wintertime?
How probable is another February 2021-type freeze?
While nothing is ever certain in life, particularly with respect to weather condition, the odds of having a similar result to the February freeze in the following winter is very low in Houston. And the odds are no higher than they are in whatsoever other given winter. Back simply earlier the common cold ready in, Matt wrote a postal service about historic Houston freeze events. The postal service touched on similar longer-duration cold snaps that occurred in 2018, 2011, 1989, 1983, 1978, 1951, 1940, 1930, 1899, and 1895. None of those occurred in dorsum to back winters.
If we want to take a more rigorous statistical approach, we can crunch some more numbers. Back in February we had official low temperatures of 16° and 13° on the 15th and 16th. So let's expect at all winters that saw back to back low temperatures of 19° or colder.
It has non happened in back-to-back winters since January 1911 and January 1912. Prior to that, it also happened in the 1893-94 and 1894-95 winters. Again, nothing is ever certain, but history is more than likely on our side here.
Practise summer hurricanes lead to wintertime snow?
One of the most common winter forecast refrains I've heard since moving to Houston in 2012 is that if we take a hurricane in summertime, nosotros almost ever have snow in the subsequent winter. 2021 saw us get hit with Hurricane Nicholas, then obviously that means we should go ready for an 1895-style snowball fight, right? In words of the neat philosopher Lee Corso, "Not so fast my friend."
Let'due south be somewhat generous and define "hitting by a hurricane" every bit a year in which a hurricane passed within 125 miles of downtown Houston (Editor'south note: Considering we are using this strict definition, 2017 was omitted, every bit Harvey was *not* a hurricane within 125 miles of Houston. Information technology was a tropical tempest at that point.) Prior to 2021, 33 hurricanes have met this criteria since 1895. If we match those years upwardly with years that saw snow in Houston (via the onetime Atmospheric condition Inquiry Center's excellent list), we can see what years saw snow after a hurricane hit. So let's do exactly that. A couple notes about this: First, just because "Houston didn't run across snow," it doesn't mean it didn't snowfall in some outlying portions of our expanse. "Houston" sprawls pretty far out, but in order to do this, nosotros need to meet some kind of definition. 2nd, you may notice a aperture between the list of hurricane years and snow years if y'all effort to do this yourself. Only remember that if a hurricane hitting in 1983, nosotros had to see snow in the winter of 1983-84 for it to qualify. Incidentally, nosotros didn't, though nosotros had a pretty memorable freeze that winter. As well, some years saw multiple hurricanes, such equally 1989, 1971, and 1934.
Since 1895, the data (plus 2021) suggests Houston has seen snowfall in 23 percent of all winters, hurricane or no hurricane. Based on the hurricane data, seven out of 30 winters following a hurricane hit since 1895 have seen snow, placing our odds at—await for it—23 percent. The takeaway? It'due south fun to say that Houston sees snow in winters following a hurricane. The statistics say that is false, and the odds of snowfall in a post-hurricane winter are perfectly identical to the odds of snowfall in any other wintertime.
We're just the messengers, but delight experience free to yell at Matt if and when information technology snows this winter.
ingersollglind1989.blogspot.com
Source: https://spacecityweather.com/space-city-weathers-official-2021-2022-winter-outlook/
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