Less scorching heat, more rain in store for Highland Lakes summer
CONNIE SWINNEY • STAFF WRITER
MARBLE FALLS — After several years of above-average temperatures and dry summers, Highland Lakes residents could experience a “milder” season thanks to a weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean.
But then, mild is a relative term.
Lately, residents are experiencing wetter-than-normal conditions, and meteorologists predict that trend, along with fewer scorching temperatures, might last at least through part of the summer.
“I grew up in Austin, so I can remember the really hot years, the rainy years,” said Paul Yura, Warning Coordination Meteorologist with the National Weather Service Office for the Austin/San Antonio area.
“Weather is full of patterns. Weather is full of trends, historic events and long-term droughts, wet periods. We were in a long-term weather pattern that lasted about a month,” he said. “The month of May saw the same weather pattern where we had large storm systems off the West Coast, over the western United States.”
May was considered the wettest month since 1895, according to the National Weather Service.
“Little spokes of energy, little disturbances would come across the state of Texas, and with all the moisture we had, we got thunderstorms,” Yura said of the spring through May. “It seemed like, at least a couple of times every week, we had thunderstorms developing, and that kind of led to a record rainfall across the state of Texas in the month of May.”
Recent milder temperatures in the upper 80s and lower 90s along with more moisture prompted by rain-drenched soil will challenge the thermometer to reach above triple-digit temperatures this summer, Yura explained.
“The most important thing we can see right not for the summer, especially the early part of the summer, it’s going to be hard to get really, really hot,” he said. “Typically, with our summers here, the hotter we get is due to how dry we are.”
Just how hot could be measured in just a few degrees.
“It won’t be able to get into 100 degrees or 105 with all this greenery and wet ground,” he said. “As soon as that starts to dry up, we’ll see our temperatures slowly start to rise. At least for June, we’re going to be pretty mild — what we think is mild.”
Should rain chances diminish, residents should expect to see the return of typical summertime temperatures.
Meteorologists attribute the latest conditions to the so-called El Nino patterns, involving temperatures measured by buoys near the equator, Yura said.
“That tends to change a lot of weather patterns across the globe,” he said. “What that does for us, typically, during the El Nino — or warmup of the ocean temperatures across the Pacific — is to bring above-average rainfall for the fall and winter time and early spring and also bring below-average temperatures.”
Yura added that, as weather watchers anticipate more rain, the chance for another dry spell looms.
“This wet period is going to go away. We’re not a tropical climate here, so we know it is going to dry out. Everybody who’s used to all this great water in the lakes right now, we better be prepared because in a few years, we could be right back to a drought condition because that’s how Texas rolls.”
connie@thepicayune.com