Texas Drought: 2011 Was The Driest Year On Record

By Marice Richter

FORT WORTH, Texas , Jan 7 (Reuters) - It's official: 2011 was the driest year on record in Texas, according to the National Weather Service. It was also the second-hottest ever.

That won't surprise Texans who lived through a year in which wildfires roared through the Lone Star State, cattle went thirsty and many Fourth of July fireworks shows were canceled.

The weather service said the average rainfall in Texas in 2011 was 14.89 inches. The previous record of 14.99 inches of average rainfall was set in 1917.

The average temperature in 2011 was 67.2 degrees. The warmest year on record was 1921, when the average temperature was 67.5 degrees, the weather service said.

The prolonged Texas drought is to blame for devastating agriculture and livestock losses, estimated in the billions of dollars.

The historic drought has killed as many as half a billion trees, not including those that died in wildfires that scorched some 4 million acres in 2011, the Texas Forest Service has reported.

While some parts of Texas received substantial rainfall during December, 97.83 percent of the state remained in severe drought this week, according to a Thursday report by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

In addition, 32.4 percent of Texas lingered in exceptional drought, the most extreme category, according to the Drought Monitor.

The current drought started in fall 2010. The period from October 2010 through September 2011 was the driest period ever, when average rainfall was only 11.18 inches, according to a report by the state climatologist.

The most drought-stricken areas are in southwest Texas as well as through the central and south-central regions of the state.

"We expect the drought to continue at least through the spring," said Joe Harris, a meteorologist for the weather service in Fort Worth.

"The La Nina weather pattern will continue, meaning more dry weather and above-average temperatures." (Editing by Corrie MacLaggan)

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Comments

[Cj Medina]

10:50 PM on 01/10/2012

1921. before the indutrial revolution . there wasn,t much carbon emitions! global warming is bullcrap!

[willowtree3]

07:18 AM on 01/10/2012

Well, Joe Harris-you have it totally wrong. It's not from La Nina, although it is a
contributing factor.
It's climate change/global warming/global weirding-whatever handle you want to
put on it.
Coal +cars=heat. Pure and simple.

[Robert Fanney]

02:43 PM on 01/10/2012

The last seven days of records :
Max highs vs max lows – 1166 to 46
Min highs vs min lows – 282 to 56
http://ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/

[StephenBP]

06:22 AM on 01/10/2012

Some folks come to the climate discussion with science and statistics.
Others come with snarky, mocking, rightist and misleading comments, often provided them by the first or second biggest industry on the planet, which would be the fossil fuel industry. They have successfully stalled progress using these tactics.
Here are what we in the reality based community call facts:
Humans generate two million pounds of carbon dioxide gas per second. This number can be derived from the reported amounts of coal and oil burned per year.
Carbon dioxide traps heat in the lower atmosphere that would otherwise escape into space.
Orbital precession has been correlated with ice ages. We should be starting to enter one now but we are not. Instead we are rapidly warming.
Humans have increased the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 40% since the beginning of the industrial revolution.
The climate is warming up extremely rapidly.
So, what do we do about it? Those in the thrall of the wealth of the fossil fuel industries of the planet tend to say “Do nothing! Business as usual!”
Those of us with training in science tend to say “ If you don’t drastically cut down the rate of use of carbon based fuels, you are very likely to overheat the climate.” In those ranks you can include scientists at NASA, NOAA, AAAS, AGU, and ACS among other august scientific organizations.
I tend to bet with the scientists.
Who do you trust?

[sheeple999]

06:05 AM on 01/10/2012

It's nice to see the nation that uses 55% of the worlds energy and other resources, producing mre than half of the orlds total pollution, finally sharing some of the consequences.

I look forward to reading all the comments from climate change deniers in the u.s. as they starve/freeze/dehydrate/overheat into oblivion. Maybe there IS a god after all.

[Andrew Harvey]

04:21 AM on 01/10/2012

Well I guess that makes it a hundred year event all right. Funny how hundred year events come around once in a hundred years, isn't it?

99 years from now I'll remind myself to dig a giant hole in the backyard and fill it with water. Luck favors the prepared.

[Robert Fanney]

11:12 PM on 01/09/2012

This is what happens when people 'pray for rain' and ignore climate scientists.

[Andrew Harvey]

04:16 AM on 01/10/2012

They prayed for rain, and it did in fact occur. Listen to climate scientists all you want, that will have no effect whatsoever.

[Robert Fanney]

02:27 PM on 01/10/2012

Dear God, save us from a new dark ages of prosecution of scientists...

[greengrl]

08:38 AM on 01/11/2012

"They prayed for rain, and it did in fact occur."

Are you kidding? You credit rain to prayer? Did you think it would never rain again in TX?

Thump your Bible all you want, that will have no effect whatsoever!

[wendynyc]

09:34 PM on 01/09/2012

Why are all OIL men such illiterates??

[Robert Fanney]

11:12 PM on 01/09/2012

Their money bags depend on it.

[Andrew Harvey]

04:16 AM on 01/10/2012

Why do you keep buying their oil?

[wendynyc]

09:31 PM on 01/09/2012

Climate change is a bunch of hokey pokey perpetuated by the LIBERAL media!

[hanspij]

10:17 PM on 01/09/2012

Nice, but why do you think we in Europ spend biljions and you in the States let your cities drown?We keep oure feet dry :)
Global warming is almost everywhere exept in the STates. Bye bye.

[Robert Fanney]

11:13 PM on 01/09/2012

Liberal media like NASA, NOAA, and The World Meteorological Organization?

[Charles Caughlan]

05:59 PM on 01/09/2012

how come all of these post are 4 months old? I lived in San Antonio for 13 yrs. and saw lots of what you call chem trails, but there were many Air Force bases in the area. The lack of responses tells me someone was looking for attention. I was recently surfing the net and I found an article referring to this subject, however the person telling the story was very uneducated and so were the two people that replied to his comments. He had supposedly Doppler radar pics of these chem trails. I need someone to convince me that this is real. Come back

[somewhatodd]

05:35 PM on 01/09/2012

what texas needs is to import more raw sewage and toxic waste from out of state and spread it out real good.

git'er done, rick!

[RickW44]

05:34 PM on 01/09/2012

Let's send Rush to Texas and have us a BBQ pig roast!!

[Bubblessharky]

04:21 PM on 01/09/2012

We just need to get Perry to pray. After all it can't have anything to do with global warming cuz there is no such thing.

[julieintx]

07:58 PM on 01/09/2012

NOAA's Robert Hoerling: 'This is not the new normal in terms of drought. Texas knows drought. Texas has been toughened on the anvil of droughts that have come and gone. This is not a climate change drought'

Science!

[julieintx]

08:06 PM on 01/09/2012

NOAA said this drought was not due to global warming.

Science!

[Moose Luck 99]

03:38 PM on 01/09/2012

The real Texas problem!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUsCqvrNQ_A

http://aircrap.org/interview-cindy-long-island-skywatch/333624/

[satyrday]

03:26 PM on 01/09/2012

And Michigan just had it's 2nd wettest year on record.

[nomadrdw]

04:27 PM on 01/09/2012

exactly, that is why it is called climate change. some places will get more and more dry, some more wet, some hotter and some colder.

[alteredstory]

05:16 PM on 01/09/2012

Actually, the trend IS one of warming. While there will still be cold records, they will become fewer and fewer. On average, no place is going to get colder. More snow WILL come to areas that get snow, and wind pattern changes will make for the occasional colder winter, but the overall trend is one of global warming.

[SonyaInTx]

03:04 PM on 01/09/2012

It was miserable in Houston this past summer. Weeks at 105+ degree heat for most of the summer months.

Rush Limbaugh needs to move to Texas in August and then tell his listeners that global warming is a fantasy....

[julieintx]

08:01 PM on 01/09/2012

That's an unscientific statement. NOAA says this drought was not caused by global warming.

[wendynyc]

09:33 PM on 01/09/2012

Seriously Julie? You believe in science?

[Robert Fanney]

11:02 AM on 01/10/2012

What you've got is one NOAA scientist claiming that a single weather event isn't linked to global warming. In this case, as in many cases, scientists will argue over whether an individual event is linked. On the other hand, the NOAA models show increased drying for the US Southwest caused by global warming, making events like the one that occurred this year more likely and more frequent.

http://www2.ucar.edu/sites/default/files/news/2010/2030-2039wOceanLabels.jpg

Here's a link to the model predictions out to 2039. This shows a much dryer US southwest. As for the individual event -- NOAA is showing that it was precipitated by La Nina and there are a number of scientists researching whether the event was enhanced by global warming.

All that said, NOAA has warned for years that the southwest will become dryer as a result of global warming.