Climate of Texas
Tropical cyclones can affect the state, either from the Gulf of Mexico or from an overland trajectory originating in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
The Northern Plains' climate is semi-arid and is prone to drought, annually receiving between 16 and 32 inches (410 and 810 mm) of precipitation, and average annual snowfall ranging between 15 and 30 inches (380 and 760 mm), with the greatest snowfall amounts occurring in the Texas panhandle and areas near the border with New Mexico.
[7] International areas with comparable climate: Southern China; North Argentina; New South Wales, Australia.
The Trans-Pecos region, also known as Big Bend Country, is in the west-central and western parts of the state, consisting of the Chihuahuan Desert and isolated mountain ranges.
[11] This is due to the gulf currents that carry humid air to the region, where it condenses and precipitates out in the vicinity of sea breeze fronts as well as when extratropical cyclones move by.
Dense advection fog can form when warm air moves over the cool shelf waters during February and March, stopping ship traffic for days.
International areas with comparable climate: Taiwan; Philippines; much of the southern parts of Queensland, Australia The region of South Texas includes the semiarid ranch country and the wetter Rio Grande Valley.
This owes to the threat from tropical weather systems, including hurricanes, which can bring torrential rains of 5 to 10 inches (130 to 250 mm) in one or two days.
The resulting September monthly rainfall maximum prevails, for example, at Corpus Christi, South Padre Island and Brownsville.
[16] More recently around Christmas of 2004, up to 13 inches (33 cm) of snow fell along the middle coast, with the maximum occurring at Victoria.
The Central Texas region, including Waco, Bryan, and Killeen, set a new record with 9 days (205 hours) at or below freezing.
This allowed Galveston to take over as the chief port city, but it was subsequently devastated by a hurricane in 1900 that killed approximately 8,000 people (possibly as many as 12,000), making it the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
This is in contrast with Louisiana and the lower Texan coast, where only 39 percent of the landfalls are from tropical cyclones of Gulf of Mexico origin.
[26] In general, flooding across Texas is more common during the spring and early autumn months, and it can also be due to nearby stationary fronts interacting with strong upper level cyclones.
[27] The most likely location for floods statewide is the Balcones Escarpment, an area of steep elevation gradient in central Texas at the boundary between the Edwards Plateau and the coastal plain.
[28] The highest temperature ever measured in Texas was 120 °F (48.9 °C), recorded on August 12, 1936 in Seymour, during the 1936 North American Heatwave, and again on June 28, 1994 in Monahans.
During the El Niño phase, the jet stream is located west-to-east across the southern portion of the United States.
Spring to early summer yields increased rainfall especially where a low pressure system is located over the Four Corners region or northern Mexico which yields monsoon-like climate (which was exacerbated during the 2015 and 2016 spring season where the City of Houston was the hardest hit as if the climate was similar to Mumbai or Kolkata, India with heavy rainfall usually from moisture from the Gulf of Mexico).
During the opposite phase, La Niña, the jet stream is much further north, therefore winter is milder and drier than normal.
[citation needed] The climate in Texas is changing partially due to global warming and rising trends in greenhouse gas emissions.
[32] As of 2016, most area of Texas had already warmed by 1.5 °F (0.83 °C) since the previous century because of greenhouse gas emissions by the United States and other countries.
[32] Texas is expected to experience a wide range of environmental impacts from climate change in the United States, including rising sea levels, more frequent extreme weather events, and increasing pressure on water resources.
