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Dr. Mark Wentzel – Hydrologist, Texas Water Development Board

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Texas Water Development Board's latest Water and Weather report. I'm Dr. Mark Wentzel, a hydrologist in the Surface Water Division here at the agency. And today, we'll be looking back at 2025.

Let's take a look at some of the big water and weather headlines. The first seven months of 2025 were wetter than normal for the state by about three inches, but we ended the year drier than normal by about an inch. 2025 was the fourth hottest year for Texas in data going back to 1895, surpassed only by 2012, 2023, and 2024. Drought began the year covering 44 percent of the state, ranged between 19 and 70 percent during the year, and ended the year covering 53 percent of the state. Statewide, end-of-year storage in our water supply reservoirs was less than 74 percent of capacity, down slightly from 2024 and six and a half percentage points lower than normal for this time of year.

Let's take a closer look at precipitation. As shown on this graph, 2025 monthly precipitation was well above average in May, June, and July. In fact, it was the tenth wettest May through July in data going back to 1895. By the end of July, cumulative precipitation for the year was three inches more than average, but August began a stretch of five consecutive months with below-average precipitation, and December 2025 was the driest December since 1950, and the third driest since 1895. By the end of the year, cumulative precipitation was an inch less than normal. Let's take a closer look at temperature.

The big story in 2025? Ongoing heat. In 2024, we broke the state's record for the hottest year in data going back to 1895, a record that had been set most recently in 2023. The lines on this graph show monthly temperature in 2025, the black line, compared to monthly temperatures in the record-setting year of 2024, the red line. After two months cooler, followed by two months warmer than 2024, we ended April 2025, 7/10 of a degree Fahrenheit behind 2024’s record pace. We fell further behind during the summer, but 2025 did set the record for the hottest November since 1895. That wasn't enough to put 2025 ahead of 2024 for the hottest year, but 2025 did finish as the fourth hottest year, trailing only 2012, 2023, and 2024.

Conditions did vary across the state, as shown by these maps of temperature and precipitation. On these maps, we're looking at both parameters for the year relative to 21st-century averages. From a drought and water supply perspective, reds, oranges, and yellows mean trouble on both maps. They show areas with above-average temperature on the left and below-average precipitation on the right. As shown on the map on the left, 2025 was warmer than normal everywhere in Texas. Scattered areas, shown in red, were three or more degrees warmer than normal. As shown in the map on the right, precipitation conditions varied much more widely. About half the state received less than half of normal precipitation, areas shown in red, but scattered areas shown in purple received 150 percent or more of normal precipitation.

These patterns of temperature and precipitation drove the contraction and expansion of drought during 2025. Drought areas within the state at the end of 2024 are shown in the map on the upper left, and conditions near the end of 2025 are shown on the upper right. The timeline on the bottom shows how drought conditions varied throughout the year. As a result of an ongoing drought that began in the fall of 2021, we began 2025 with 44 percent of the state in drought. After reaching a peak value of 70 percent in March, the drought contracted to a minimum value of 19 percent in September. Later in the fall, drought expanded, reaching 65 percent during November. At the end of the year, drought covered 53 percent of the state.

What kind of year has 2025 been for our water supplies? This graph tells part of the story. The bars show the combined storage of our state's surface water supply reservoirs as a percent of capacity at the end of each of the last few years. The black dashed line shows the median value for end-of-year storage from data going back to 1990. As you can see, we ended 2025 at about 74 percent of capacity, just a few tenths of a percentage point lower than how we ended 2024. Unfortunately, that's about six and a half percentage points below the median value for this time of year. Statewide, we didn't lose a lot of volume from our reservoirs in 2025, but we didn't make any progress in terms of getting back to normal conditions either.

Of course, conditions vary. On this chart, we're looking at surface water supplies for 20 municipal areas across the state. Change during the year in 2025 is plotted on the x-axis and current condition relative to the long-term median for each system is plotted on the y-axis. Systems to the right of the vertical gray line gained volume during the year, systems to the left lost volume. Systems above the horizontal gray line ended the year holding volumes greater than their long-term median values. Systems below had end of year volumes less than median values.

The location of the data point for each area tells the story of how 2025 impacted that area's surface water supplies. Cities on the upper right like Lubbock, Amarillo, Wichita Falls, Waco, and Austin fared well. Their systems gained at least a few percentage points of volume and finished the year better than normal. Austin was the biggest winner, gaining more than 30 percentage points and finishing the year with volume more than normal for the first time in five years. For cities on the lower right, 2025 brought some good news, but not enough. Brownsville and Laredo gained about seven and nine percentage points, respectively, but supplies for both remain more than 30 percentage points below normal. For cities on the lower left, 2025 was more discouraging. They both lost storage relative to 2024 and had supplies lower than normal at the end of 2025.

Things aren't really so discouraging for Beaumont-Port Arthur. Sam Rayburn Reservoir, which supplies most of the volume for that system, was drawn down in 2025 to allow for scheduled maintenance at the dam. That system should quickly bounce back to normal in 2026, but for Corpus Christi, 2025 was a discouraging year. Supplies declined nine percentage points during the year, and as a result of several years of drought, supplies are now more than 40 percentage points lower than normal for this time of year. That concludes our report. Until next time, I hope you all stay healthy and safe and have a great 2026.