 | | Click image for a larger National Weather Service map showing amount of rainfall regions of Texas received in 2004. | |  f you live in Texas and you love rain, 2004 was a very good year for you. The state logged 2004 as its third wettest year on record, with a statewide average of 40.06 inches for the year, less than two inches below the all-time average of 41.93 inches recorded in 1919, according to the National Weather Service. "If it hadn't been for a relatively dry December, 2004 could very well have turned out to be our wettest year on record," said Larry Eblen, a meteorologist with the Weather Service's San Antonio-Austin office. "As it is, you'd have to go back to 1957 to find the kinds of conditions we experienced in 2004." For a state that averages about 28 inches in a typical year, last year's rains had a dramatic effect, recharging aquifers, filling reservoirs and minimizing, if not eliminating, the need for local burn bans. That's in sharp contrast to 1999 and 2000, when the state had seemingly lost its rain license and was gripped in one of its severest dry spells in more than a decade. In 1999, the state averaged only 22.37 inches of rain, making that year the 12th driest on record. Today, there's not even a hint of drought anywhere in the state, according to the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which rates conditions throughout the state as ranging from slightly wet to extremely wet. The Index rates the Panhandle and West Texas — areas that typically receive the smallest amounts of rain — as the wettest regions. Many reservoirs at or near capacity
Roughly two-thirds of the state's 119 major reservoirs are hovering around their full-capacity levels: 52 are at or above full elevation, and another 27 are more than 90 percent full, according to the Texas Water Development Board. "It's definitely above norm," said Bill Mullican, the TWDB's deputy executive administrator for planning, of the reservoir levels. "It was a wet year, even for those areas that are technically still in their 'drought of record.'" Even those reservoirs that did not totally refill still have much higher than normal levels, in some cases doubling the amount of water available to communities that depend on the reservoirs for their water supply, Mullican said. For example, the amount of water in Lake J.B. Thomas on the Colorado River, which serves Big Spring, Odessa and Snyder, rose from less than 25,000 to about 62,000 acre-feet, about a third of its total capacity. Along the adjacent Brazos River, Fort Phantom Hill Reservoir, which serves Abilene, similarly rose from less than 30,000 to more than 66,000 acre-feet, about 95 percent of its total capacity and at its highest level since 1977. Rains cause floods, recharge Edwards Aquifer
Along the lower Colorado River, the rains kept the chain of Highland Lakes topped out for much of the year and forced the Lower Colorado River Authority into flood operations in June and November. The November flood inundated the community of Wharton downstream of Austin. The rains recharged the Edwards Aquifer, which supplies water to more than 1.7 million people in San Antonio and the surrounding South Central Texas area. The Edwards Aquifer Authority's test well in San Antonio netted an 18-foot gain for the year. In late November, on the tail end of record rainfall for the region that month, the well peaked at 702.1 feet, a little more than a foot below its all-time high of 703.3 feet in June 1992. "We're entering 2005 in good shape," said Geary Schindel, chief technical officer for the Edwards Aquifer Authority. "If we receive another rain of four to six inches (early this year), we could break the 1992 record for the all-time high level for the aquifer." El Niño cause of rains, experts say
The cause of this bounty of rain, according to Eblen, is a recurring weather phenomenon with a familiar name — El Niño, which scoops Pacific moisture and dumps it on the western half of the United States, including Texas. Its handiwork can still be seen in the heavy rains that have resulted in mud slides, flooding and massive snow banks in California, Arizona and other western states. "'El' is back, and 'La' has left the area," Eblen said, referring to El Niño's counterpart, La Niña, which usually creates drier conditions in the West. El Niño so dominated the Texas weather pattern that little of the state's rainfall came from storms generated from the Gulf of Mexico, Eblen said. During drier years, some weather-watchers find themselves hoping for such tropical storms to relieve parched conditions. Eblen said the El Niño-driven rains managed to be evenly distributed throughout the year, keeping the ground saturated and generating more runoff, even from smaller rains. "Some heavily saturated areas that received an inch and a half or two inches of rain would experience the kind of flooding that they would typically get after three to four inches," Eblen said. Long-term trend: a wetter climate?
The 2004 rains fit into a long-term pattern that suggests Texas may be trending toward a wetter climate. According to figures from one National Weather Service meteorologist, the state's rainfall average over the past 30 years, 28.87 inches, represents a 3 percent increase over the 28.08-inch average for the 110 years that the government has kept records. The average for the state's rainfall over the last 10 years is even higher: 29.16 inches, a 4 percent increase over the 110-year average. "We're definitely not in a drought or a drying trend," said Victor Murphy, climate service program manager for the National Weather Service Southern Region. "Long-term, we may not be getting wetter, but we're definitely not getting drier." Even so, the wetter trend does not discount the need to conserve the state's water resources. "It won't take much of a dry spell to put the state back into a hydrological or soil-condition drought, which is where we have been for several years," cautioned the TWDB's Mullican. Murphy agreed with that assessment, saying that "we still need to conserve water to prepare for any short-term dryer periods." But he added that the long-term trend suggests that resource planners also should consider making additional investments in flood-awareness and mitigation programs. John Williams is editor of LCRA Currents. Write him at john.williams@lcra.org. Related info:
During many flood situations, some motorists drown after driving past barriers warning of flooded roadways. To help combat this needless tragedy, the National Weather Service has a campaign called Turn Around Don't Drown. |
