Weather Data for Southeast Texas
By Bob Randall,Ph.D.
Fall 2007

 

 

Introduction

 

The weather data reported here are either Airport Official National Weather Stations (AP), other National Weather Service Stations (NWS), or in some cases Personal or Amateur Weather Stations (PWS). In many cases, the service publishes data going back ten years or more, but in others it is more limited.

 

With all this data, the reader is cautioned that there are signifficant differences in temperatures even in the same local area depending on how sheltered from north winds the spot is, what sort of structures or vegetation surrounds it, what sort of materials are nearby to absorb heat during the day, and where the spot is in elevation (top or bottom of a valley).  If one studies data for ten years or more at one location, one is struck by the huge swings from one year to the next. The low for the year might be 32˚ one year and 18˚ the next.

 

To make patterns more obvious in the tables below, the data has been summarized. For example, over the last 11 years, the low temperature might have been between 18˚ and 20˚ about 9% of the time (once) and between 29˚ and 32˚ about 4 times--36% of the time.

 

It is worth remembering that the winters of 1983 and 1989 during extreme El Ninos and Sunspot Maxima had much, much colder weather than anything seen in the most recent decade. It cannot be assumed that 1989 lows like Galveston's 12˚, Intercontinental's 7˚, and College Station's 5˚ will never return.