TX drought thoughts from Harris Co Flood Control Met
Posted by CypressTX on 8/9/2011, 12:01 pm
who posts on a local board; Aug 3rd:

"The historic drought and heat go hand in hand and it is either going to take a major tropical system or Fall cold fronts to finally break this pattern. The dry ground can and is producing positive feedback against the atmosphere and in turn allows the low level temperature to warm quickly each day which in turn dries the ground and vegetation even more...and the cycle continues until rain falls over a wide area to break the pattern. That is how droughts become so entrenched...to break it you need enough widespread rain to really wet the ground and green up the vegetation and help add moisture back into the low levels from evapotranspiration.

History of such past events in TX usually come to an end with a tropical system and it is usually more than a tropical storm more likely a hurricane. With that said there is one past major drought (current drought of record...1950's) that was a major multi-year drought and it is possible we are heading into such an event with our current drought which really started the day after Hurricane Ike (the last 3 years have all featured below normal rainfall), but the last 6 months have been off the charts. In fact it would have to rain 4.92 inches right now to knock Houston out of the current driest Feb-July period ever recorded....that is an amazing record. The 181 days without an inch of rainfall in Houston is also approaching the record of 192 days in 1917-1918, so we are nearing or breaking records of a past most severe droughts.

We will need an extended period of wet weather to end this drought. On average a tropical system could produce 10-15 inches of rainfall, but most areas in SE TX are 20-30 inches behind normal since last October, so one tropical system will not likely end the drought...it would greatly help however.

On a side note I measured a 7 inch crack in the soil yesterday in Fort Bend County next to a cotton field that the cotton was only about 1.5 feet high. I decided to measure downward just to see and never hit ground when the measuring tape stopped at 25 feet. I tried it 3 other times in 3 different cracks and never reached ground...the damage this drought is doing will not fully be done for years to come and I suspect that the impacts will linger for years. I was asked to do a presentation at a conference in early June on the drought and did a little research on past TX weather and some of the result were shocking. In fact what we are going through right now was much more common pre 1960 and in the past 40 year or so we have actually seen a wealth of rainfall especially in the spring months that TX did not have pre 1960. It is very possible that this is closer to the real TX weather than what we have become use to over the past 40 years...and if so where multi-year severe dryness is more probable then we are going to be in for some tough decisions when it comes to water supply."

HPC's 12z, 5-day QPF - looks like Dallas might get a drizzle? nada for Houston area


43
In this thread:
Drought forces Texas town to recycle sewage water - Gianmarc, 8/7/2011, 4:02 pm
< Return to the front page of the: message board | monthly archive this page is in
Post A Reply
This thread has been archived and can no longer receive replies.