Texas Climate – Sep 2026September 2026 Update

Novarupta (Katmai) eruption

The largest volcanic eruption anywhere in the world in the 20th century - 13 km3 of magma, about thirty times the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption - at Novarupta in Alaska on 6-8 June 1912. Ash reached 100,000 ft and cooled the Northern Hemisphere by roughly 0.3°C over 1912-13. Unlike a tropical eruption such as Pinatubo, a high-latitude eruption's haze stays in its own hemisphere, so it did little to the Southern Hemisphere.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, Alaska Volcano Observatory, National Park Service, Oman et al. 2005

The Dust Bowl

The Texas panhandle around Dalhart and Amarillo was among the worst-affected country in the United States. Ploughing up drought-resistant native grassland for wheat during the wet, high-price years of the 1910s and 1920s left bare soil with nothing to hold it when the rains failed - the mechanism that turned a drought into a dust bowl.

Schubert et al. 2004, NCAR/UCAR

Black Sunday, the worst Dust Bowl storm

The Black Sunday duster swept south out of the Oklahoma panhandle into the Texas panhandle on the afternoon of 14 April 1935, reaching Amarillo and beyond. Visibility fell to nothing, and it is still the single most-remembered storm of the Dust Bowl years.

NWS Norman

Post-WWII industrial expansion begins

After the Second World War, coal and oil use grew rapidly across Europe, North America and the Soviet Union. Global sulphur dioxide emissions rose from about 30 to about 130 million tonnes a year by 1980, and the sulphate haze they formed masked part of the greenhouse warming underneath - the effect known as 'global dimming'.

Klimont et al. 2013

The 1950s drought

1956 was Texas's 2nd-driest year - 380 mm, 46% below its 1961-90 average. Texas statewide rainfall fell from 90% of normal in 1950 to 55% by 1956, and a state water official later called it the most costly drought in 600 years. It is still the benchmark Texas measures later droughts against, including 2011.

NOAA Drought.gov, NOAA Climate Program Office, Texas Water Development Board

How much ENSO really controls Texas's winter rain

Across the fourteen ENSO events in this site's record, Texas's winter rainfall followed the index in five of six El Niños and seven of eight La Niñas. The index explains about 29% of the year-to-year variation in Texas's December-February rainfall. The extremes: 1997-98 came in +63% against the 1961-90 average, 1975-76 -55%.

NOAA CPC Oceanic Nino IndexENSO Tracker

Agung eruption

Agung's eruption in Bali put a veil of sulphate haze into the stratosphere that cooled global temperature by about 0.3°C over 1963-66.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

US Clean Air Act

The 1970 Clean Air Act set strict national standards for sulphur dioxide and particulates, and American skies got measurably cleaner over the decades that followed. There is a climate sting in that success: sulphate aerosols reflect sunlight, so removing them removed a cooling effect that had been partly masking greenhouse warming. Measured here, Texas averaged +1.03°C warmer across 2006-2025 than across the two decades before the Act, 1951-1970, against a median of +1.09°C across the 49 states whose records reach back that far. Every one of them warmed. The range runs from +0.66°C in Oklahoma to +1.67°C in Alaska, so the question a state's own chart answers is not whether it warmed, but by how much.

US EPA

The 1973-74 La Niña

Globally this was a strong La Niña in the middle of a sustained multi-year cool phase. In Texas it showed up as winter rainfall 26% below the 1961-90 average - its 10th-largest ENSO rainfall swing on record.

ONI -2.0°C · RONI -1.9°C

NOAA CPCENSO Tracker

The 1975-76 La Niña

Texas's winter rainfall ran 55% below its 1961-90 average in the 1975-76 La Niña - its 2nd-largest ENSO rainfall swing on record.

ONI -1.6°C · RONI -1.1°C

NOAA CPCENSO Tracker

The cold winters of 1976-79

1979 is Texas's 2nd-coldest year in this site's 1950-2025 record. Its first months were the end of the winter of 1978-79, the coldest on record for the contiguous United States.

Illinois State Water Survey, Missouri Climate Center, Monthly Weather Review (1978), Wikipedia

Pacific Decadal Oscillation flips to a warm phase

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a North Pacific pattern, and its influence on this side of the country is weak and indirect - mostly through how it nudges the winter jet stream downstream. Its 1976-77 flip marks a genuine shift in Pacific-basin climate, but for eastern states the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is the ocean cycle that matters more.

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Global SO2 emissions peak

Global sulphur dioxide emissions peak at about 130 million tonnes a year, then begin a long decline as Europe, North America and Japan clean up their air. As the aerosol mask thins, the rate of global warming picks up through the 1980s.

Klimont et al. 2013

The 1980 heat wave and drought

1980 gave Texas 10.1 heatwave days, its 9th-highest of the 1950-2025 record. Texas had already been through the far deeper drought of the 1950s, which remains its benchmark; 1980 was severe but did not approach it. It is worth noting 1980 ranks only 42nd-warmest here by annual mean: a fierce three-month summer barely moves a twelve-month average, which is why a heatwave-days count finds this year and an annual temperature record does not.

NOAA NCEI Billion-Dollar Disasters, Linda Hall Library, Karl & Quayle 1981

El Chichón eruption

A sulphur-rich eruption in Mexico whose aerosol cloud stayed in the stratosphere for more than two years, cooling the Northern Hemisphere by about 0.2°C.

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program

1982-83 El Niño

Globally this was the strongest El Niño since 1950 on NOAA's RONI index, which strips out background ocean warming. In Texas it showed up as winter rainfall 40% above the 1961-90 average - its 4th-largest ENSO rainfall swing on record.

ONI +2.1°C · RONI +2.4°C

NOAA CPC, NOAA CPC (2)ENSO Tracker

Daytime warming catches up with the night-led pattern

Across 1961-90, 81% of the world's land saw nights warming faster than days. Across 1991-2020 the pattern reversed: 70% saw days warming faster, as the industrial haze that had been dimming daytime sunshine was cleaned up. The study compares two fixed thirty-year windows; measured as a turning point, this site's own global series turns around 1982.

Zhong et al. 2023

Mount Pinatubo erupts

Pinatubo's cooling is only faintly visible in Texas's own record. 1993, two years after the June 1991 eruption, ranks 16th-coldest of the 76 years there, though 1997 has since been colder. A single large eruption can hold temperatures down for two or three years; it cannot reverse the trend.

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Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flips to a warm phase

The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flipped to a warm phase in 1995, and for the Gulf coast that has meant a more active hurricane season: the warm phase since includes Katrina and Rita in 2005, Harvey in 2017 and Ida in 2021. It is a natural cycle of roughly 60-70 years, so it shifts the baseline rather than driving the long-term trend.

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1997-98 El Niño

Globally this was the strongest El Niño ever measured by the raw ONI index. In Texas it showed up as winter rainfall 63% above the 1961-90 average - its largest ENSO rainfall swing on record.

ONI +2.4°C · RONI +2.3°C

NOAA CPC, NOAA NCEIENSO Tracker

Pacific Decadal Oscillation flips back to a cool phase

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation returned to a cool phase around 1998-99. Its direct effects are western - drier conditions across the south-west, changes in North Pacific fisheries - and its influence on this side of the country is weak and indirect. The Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which flipped warm in 1995, is the ocean cycle with more bearing on eastern weather.

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The 2007-08 La Niña

Texas's winter rainfall ran 30% below its 1961-90 average in the 2007-08 La Niña - its 8th-largest ENSO rainfall swing on record.

ONI -1.8°C · RONI -1.7°C

NOAA CPCENSO Tracker

2009-10 El Niño

Texas's winter rainfall ran 54% above its 1961-90 average in the 2009-10 El Niño - its 3rd-largest ENSO rainfall swing on record.

ONI +1.5°C · RONI +1.5°C

NOAA/IRI ENSO archiveENSO Tracker

The 2010-2012 La Niña

A strong double-winter La Niña peaking at an ONI of -1.57, and the direct driver of the worst single-year drought in Texas's history. Texas's winter rainfall ran 37% below its 1961-90 average, and its driest 12 months on record, October 2010 to September 2011, sit inside this event - the drought has its own entry here.

ONI -1.6°C · RONI -1.6°C

NOAA CPC ONI

Start of the sustained rise in US heatwave frequency

Texas's own Heatwave Days (WSDI) count rose from a 1961-90 average of 2.6 days a year to 16.5 in 2016-25 - more than a sixfold increase, among the steepest anywhere in the United States.

World Bank CCKP (CCKP), NOAA Climate at a Glance

Texas's driest 12 months on record, 2011

State climatologist confirmed Oct 2010-Sep 2011 was Texas's driest 12-month period since 1895; summer 2011 temperatures ~2°F above the prior state record; $7bn+ agricultural losses. A 2021 UT Austin study found it was even more severe than initially assessed.

UT Austin / Texas Tribune

The 2012 drought and heat

2012 was Texas's 3rd-warmest year and its 10th-highest for heatwave days, so the heat was real here - but the rainfall finished only 20th-driest of 76 years. The drought that made 2012 notorious nationally had its worst conditions over the Plains and Corn Belt; Texas got the summer heat without the depth of drought it had known in 2011.

NOAA NCEI, Summer 2012 Drought Update, NOAA NCEI, Drought

Post-2013 acceleration in US temperatures

6 of Texas's ten warmest years on record have occurred since 2013, and 9 of the ten since 2000, with 2024 the warmest of all.

NOAA Climate at a Glance

2015-16 El Niño

Globally this was tied with 1997-98 as the strongest on the raw ONI index. In Texas it showed up as winter rainfall 3% below the 1961-90 average - its 14th-largest ENSO rainfall swing on record.

ONI +2.6°C · RONI +2.3°C

NOAA CPCENSO Tracker

2015-2025: the eleven warmest years on record

Globally, the eleven warmest years on record have all happened since 2015. Texas's own record is a looser fit - six of its eleven warmest fall in that span, with 2012, 2011, 2006, 1998 and 1954 outside it. Its warmest year is 2024.

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Hurricane Harvey

Harvey came ashore near Rockport on 25 August 2017 as a Category 4, then stalled. Over four days it dropped 60.58 inches of rain near Nederland, the highest total from any tropical cyclone in US history, and flooded large parts of Houston. Damages reached about $125bn. Attribution studies agree the rainfall was made roughly three times more likely and 15-38% more intense by climate change - it is the most thoroughly studied extreme-rainfall event in the country.

World Weather Attribution, van Oldenborgh et al. 2017, Risser & Wehner 2017, NOAA Climate.gov

Low-sulphur shipping fuel rule (IMO 2020)

New international shipping rules cut the sulphur allowed in ship fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% almost overnight, removing about 8 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide a year. With less sulphate haze over the oceans, it may have added around 0.1°C of warming by 2023-24.

Gettelman et al. 2024

Winter Storm Uri (Texas freeze), February 2021

Texas's coldest winter storm since December 1989 - 6-9 consecutive days below freezing in central Texas (longest freezing streak on record there), parts of East Texas the coldest since ~1890. 210+ deaths in Texas, the first billion-dollar US weather disaster of 2021, massive power-grid failure. It followed a sudden stratospheric warming in early January 2021 that disrupted the polar vortex and let Arctic air plunge south across the Plains.

NOAA NCEIPolar Vortex Tracker

2023-24 El Niño

Globally this was a strong El Niño, the first since 2015-16. In Texas it showed up as winter rainfall 33% above the 1961-90 average - its 6th-largest ENSO rainfall swing on record.

ONI +2.0°C · RONI +1.4°C

NOAA CPCENSO Tracker

The Texas Hill Country floods, July 2025

Overnight into 4 July 2025, storms fed by moisture from the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry stalled over the Texas Hill Country and dropped 2-3 inches of rain an hour onto the headwaters of the Guadalupe River. The river rose more than 20 feet in a few hours through Kerr County, sweeping through riverside homes and summer camps. More than 130 people died across central Texas, over 100 of them in Kerr County, among them children at Camp Mystic.

NOAA NESDIS, Texas Public Radio