The lack of rain in South Texas is getting ridiculous, to be quite honest. May is likely to be the 10th consecutive month with below-average precipitation, unless something crazy happens over the next week and a half.
Typically, May is the wettest month of the year for San Antonio, averaging 4.4 inches of rain. This month has not resembled a typical May, though, as only 0.19 inch of rain has fallen so far, as of Tuesday.
Mother Nature seems to be singling out San Antonio, too, keeping the Alamo City dry while the rest of the state gets all the rain. During May, Houston has recorded 2.98 inches of rain, Dallas has 2.31 inches, and even Austin, only 75 miles up the road on Interstate 35, has more than seven times more rainfall than San Antonio during May.
The numbers become even worse when you go farther back in time. Since Aug. 1 of last year, San Antonio has recorded just 10.02 inches of rain. On average, we should have more than 25 inches of rain during that time frame. That drastic 15-inch rainfall deficit over the past 10 months is not sustainable for our region’s sources of drinking water — our lakes, reservoirs and aquifers.
PHOTOS: Drastic water level falls can be seen across several Central and South Texas lakes.
As of Tuesday, Medina Lake’s surface elevation sits 95.32 feet below its capacity level and is a measly 2% full, an all-time record low. Canyon Lake’s surface elevation also is at an all-time low, nearly 32 feet below capacity level and only 45.4% full.
San Antonio, along with a large part of the Hill Country, is in exceptional drought, the highest drought category as measured by the U.S. Drought Monitor. Many other Texas cities, such as Houston, Dallas, Waco and Wichita Falls, are not under any type of drought designation.
Rainier weather pattern coming?
This week, rain chances are going to stay quite low across the region, with exception to a slight chance of storms Thursday evening. Thankfully, weather models are starting to paint a rainier picture next week.
The best rain chances are generally expected May 25-28, as a late spring cold front pushes through South Texas. San Antonio has an 88% chance of near- to above-average rainfall during this time, with only a 12% chance of below-average rainfall, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center.
How much rainfall we can expect is unclear, as models still disagree on amounts. The American GFS model depicts rainfall totals close to a half-inch for that period, while the European ECMWF model is closer to 2 inches.
Because of the model disagreement, forecasters tend to lean on the National Blend of Models, which averages together several weather models to come up with a “best-guess” solution. The NBM says San Antonio can expect close to an inch of rain next week.
While an inch of rain is definitely not enough to solve our drought situation here in South Texas, it would be a small step in the right direction.