AUSTIN (KXAN) — Between a warming climate, the return of La Niña and a worsening drought — this winter could have a lot in store for Central Texas.
New Winter Weather Alerts
First, let’s start with what’s new this winter. Winter weather alerts will be familiar to anyone who’s lived in Texas the last few years, but this year there will be some changes.
The National Weather Service is looking to simplify its products to improve messaging.
Freeze Watches and Freeze Warnings
Previously, the National Weather Service issued “Freeze Watches” and “Freeze Warnings” ahead of the first expected freeze. Once a freeze was reached across the majority of a county, no additional Freeze Alerts were issued for the rest of the winter.
Hard Freeze Watches and Warnings were reserved for long duration events with below-freezing temperatures (think February 2021) where bitter cold could also result in prolonged dangers to life as well as widespread damage to infrastructure (pipes) and property.
Starting this winter, only Freeze Watches and Warnings will be issued ahead of the first freeze of the season. Separate Winter Weather Alerts will be reserved for those particularly cold scenarios (see below).
Wind Chill Alerts replaced
Previous winters had both Wind Chill Advisories, Wind Chill Watches/Warnings and Extreme Cold Watches/Warnings to warn of the arrival of dangerously cold air. This winter, the “wind chill” terminology will be dropped in favor of a clearer message: it’s going to get COLD.
Cold Weather Advisories, Extreme Cold Watches and Warnings will be the standard moving forward and will take into account the cold, with or without wind.
La Niña returns
La Niña is coming back … back again. This will be our fourth of the last five winters in a La Niña pattern. Last winter, we were in an El Niño after three previous consecutive La Niña winters. But what is La Niña?
La Niña is characterized by cooler-than-normal waters in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.
These water temperature changes force the jet stream, which you can think of as the ‘storm track’, farther north, generally keeping Central Texas warmer and drier than normal for winter as a whole.
Recent La Niña winters: ‘Snowmageddon’ and ‘Ice Storm’ come to mind
Despite the forecast supporting a turn to La Niña this winter, and as a result, a big-picture trend towards warmer and drier conditions, we never let our guard down.
In fact, some of our recent La Niña winters have brought some of the most severe winter weather outbreaks in our area’s history.
Mid-February 2021
The La Niña winter of 2020-2021 brought what became one of the worst winter weather events in state history.
Not only did downtown Austin record its second-biggest snowfall on record with a total just shy of six and half inches, but the city also endured the longest stretch of time at or below freezing — 144 hours or 6 consecutive days.
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A photo of snow coming down at Congress Avenue and 5th Street in downtown Austin at 10:47 p.m. February 14, 2021. (KXAN Photo/ Frank Martinez). -
A tape measure showing 9 inches of snow in Lakeline, courtesy Chantel Prell -
Snow in Manor on Monday morning (Courtesy of Rafael Zamudio) -
Snow-covered Austin. Picture taken downtown, looking to the southwest. Photo: Clay Davis -
A transmission tower supports power lines after a snow storm on February 16, 2021 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
Sub-freezing temperatures, ice and snow led to over 500,000 without power in Central Texas. Some of those outages were because of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas needing to balance high demand with low power generation, saying blackouts were required to keep the state grid intact. We’d later find out that Texas was just 4 minutes away from a total grid collapse.
Over the course of 10 days, schools and universities closed, the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport shut down and multiple Central Texas cities issued boil water notices, including Austin, when water treatment plants went offline.
By the end of the storm, 246 Texas lost their lives — 28 of those in Travis County.
Two winters later …The ice storm of 2023
Early February 2023 brought one of the worst ice storms in Austin’s history.
A powerful Arctic outbreak and winter storm brought up to a quarter of an inch of ice to Austin — damaging an estimated 10.5 million trees, which was 30% of the city’s tree canopy. Ice accretion totaled over ¾ of an inch in parts of the Hill Country. Once again, it rewrote the record books.
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Trees covered in ice in northwest Austin on Feb. 1, 2023. (Courtesy Scott Ramsay Images) -
Icy scenes in Dripping Springs on Feb. 1, 2023. (Courtesy Christina Drake) -
Icy scenes in Dripping Springs on Feb. 1, 2023. (Courtesy Christina Drake) -
Thick ice accumulation near Bee Cave on Feb. 2, 2023. (Courtesy Kelly Thomas) -
Crepe myrtles bend from the weight of ice, forming a tunnel in Cedar Park on Feb. 1, 2023. (Courtesy Rachael Jennison)
Weak and short duration La Niña … Or is it?
With the expectation of a weaker and shorter duration La Niña, predicting the outlook for winter brings more unique challenges including climate change complicating the forecast.
Winter forecasts are rarely a slam dunk anyway as there are multiple factors guiding weather patterns around the world, but this winter climate scientists like Tom DiLiberto, who works for NOAA, said it may be even more difficult to figure out.
“A weak La Niña doesn’t mean that we won’t necessarily see La Niña-like impacts across the United States. It just means we may not be as confident in that coming to fruition,” DiLiberto said.
La Niña’s strength is based on just how much colder than normal the water temperature is in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The colder the water there, the stronger the La Niña.
But according to NASA, as oceans warm globally due to climate change, it’s harder for the waters to cool to the levels that define a La Niña, especially a strong one.
DiLiberto clarified, “there is the potential that even though the La Niña, by our normal metrics, looks like it’s going to be a weak, or even a borderline case, that the atmosphere may reflect the more typical (moderate or strong) La Niña pattern, just based upon the difference in temperatures between the western and the eastern Pacific Ocean.”
Adding to the uncertainty: La Niña hasn’t officially begun and when it does, it will be among the latest starts on record.
“Going back to 1950, there might be two cases where that’s happened. So we do not have a huge backlog of cases to be able to look back and see what the sort of impacts have been,” DiLiberto said.
The lack of precedent makes understanding the impact to winter weather even more difficult to grasp.
Our First Warning Weather Team Winter Outlook 2024-2025
So what do we expect now through February?
The factors involved:
- Expectation for at least a weak La Niña pattern (warmer & drier on average)
- Climate change is causing warming winters, according to 99% of climate scientists
- Worsening drought allows temperatures to climb more during the day
Our In-Depth forecast:
- We expect average temperatures this winter to be 2-3 degrees above the 30-year normals.
- La Niña winters have the potential to bring brief spells of arctic temperatures with colder Canadian air spilling farther south.
- We expect 1-2 of those particularly-cold blasts this season, with the potential for at least one winter weather event.
- The precipitation forecast is more of a challenge. One wet week can reverse a season of drought, but the expected storm track does not look to favor frequent rains.
- We expect most of the area will see 1-2 inches less rain than a typical winter.
Winter preparedness
Taking into account these predictions, it’s important to be ready for anything. A winter weather kit — with batteries, water and food — could be the difference between life and death.
We also encourage you to download our KXAN Weather app, so we have a way to communicate with you in the event of impactful weather. Our app is a free download in your mobile device’s app store.
Stay with KXAN all season long as our team of meteorologists track every winter storm in what’s usually a short but memorable season here in Central Texas.