It's been a wet November in Central Texas, with cold, rainy days through the week of the Thanksgiving holiday. That weather might have affected your plans, but was a welcome break from continuing drought.
It was also another unusual twist in what has shaped up to be a weird year in local weather.
November is not known for heavy rainfall in Austin. The month averages a respectable 2.7 inches of precipitation in a normal year. This year was different, with around 4.1 inches recorded at Austin’s Camp Mabry weather station by Nov. 28.
That above-average accumulation helped make up for some of the rainfall deficit we’ve had this fall. It also continues a quirk in the weather this year, in which drier months like February and August have delivered more rainfall than what are normally our wettest months: May, June and October.
But it wasn’t enough to lift the region from a continued drought.
“Definitely it looks like it was wet during the month of November,� Orlando Bermudez, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New Braunfels, said. “But when it comes to the bigger picture, we're still way below those [rain] numbers for the year."
On an average year, Austin gets more than 35 inches of rain. This year, Bermudez says, the city is still running a deficit of about 9 inches with only one month left. That means recent rain won’t be enough to refill area reservoirs, some of which are .
Bermudez says the long term forecast also suggests a hotter and drier winter than usual, thanks to a persistent La Niña weather pattern.
