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Water + Weather for December 2024: Year in Review Posted on January 16, 2025


Transcript

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 taking a look back at the year 2024. Let's take a look at some of the big water and weather headlines. The first seven months of 2024 were wetter than normal by more than 5 inches, but we ended the year only slightly wetter than normal by about 2 inches. 2024 was the hottest year for Texas in data going back to 1895, breaking the old record set in 2023 by half of a degree Fahrenheit. Drought began the year covering 39 percent of the state and expanded to cover 44 percent by the end of the year. Statewide, storage in our water supply reservoirs saw an annual increase for the first time since 2018, up five percentage points during 2024.

Let's take a closer look at precipitation. As shown on this graph, monthly precipitation was near or above average for the first seven months of the year. By the end of July, cumulative precipitation was 5 inches more than average, and we were on pace for our wettest year since 2015. But August 24 was the 10th driest August on record, and October 2024 was the second driest. Only October 1952 was drier. By the end of the year, annual precipitation was only 2 inches wetter than average, and since August, we're almost 3 inches drier than normal.

Conditions do vary across the state, as shown on this map of county precipitation rankings for 2024. Twelve counties in East Texas shown, in the darkest green, had their wettest year in the last 130 years. At the same time, Jeff Davis and Presidio counties in far West Texas and Uvalde County in Central Texas recorded their driest year since 2011 and their fourth driest since 1895.

Let's take a closer look at temperature. The big story in 2024? We broke the state's record for the hottest year in data going back to 1895. That record was most recently set in 2023. The lines on this graph show monthly temperature in 2023, the orange line, and this year, the red line. Thanks to the hottest October ever recorded, the third hottest November, and the second hottest December, 2024's average temperature exceeded 2023's by half a degree. 2024 resets the record for Texas' hottest year, the fourth time we've reset that record since 2011. Again, conditions do vary across the state, as shown on this map of county average temperature rankings for 2024. Two hundred and five counties, shown in the darkest red, had their hottest year in 2024. Of the remaining counties, Harrison and Marion counties in the northeast were the coolest, each recording their eighth hottest year since 1895.

2024's temperature and precipitation drove the contraction and expansion of drought during the year as a result of an ongoing drought that began in the fall of 2021. 2024 began with 39 percent of the state in drought. Drought areas within the state on January 2 are shown in the map on the upper right. After the first seven relatively wet months of the year, drought contracted to 20 percent, as shown on the timeline at the bottom. In the fall, drought expanded, reaching a peak of 74 percent during October. At the end of the year, drought covered about 44 percent of the state, as shown in the map on the upper right.

What kind of year has 2024 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 2024 at about 74 percent of capacity, about six percentage points below the median value. But that's about five percentage points better than last year and the first annual increase in storage since 2018. We're certainly not back to normal conditions, but from a statewide perspective, 2024 was a step in the right direction. Of course, conditions vary.

On this chart, we're looking at end-of-year conditions for 20 municipal areas across the state. Change during the year in 2024 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 medians. 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 2024 impacted that area's surface water supplies. Cities on the upper right, like Tyler, Beaumont, Port Arthur, Nacogdoches, Wichita Falls, and Temple/Killeen, fared quite well. Their systems gained more than 15 percentage points of volume and finished the year close to or better than normal. Austin had an encouraging year, up 13 percentage points, but at the end of the year, supply volume was still almost 30 percentage points lower than normal. For cities on the lower left, 2024 was more discouraging. Brownsville and Laredo didn't lose a lot of volume, but at the end of the year, their systems were more than 35 percentage points lower than normal. Corpus Christi and El Paso had discouraging years because they lost significant volume and are ending the year with storage volumes well below normal. That concludes our report. Until next time, I hope you all stay healthy and safe.



This article is posted in Weather / Drought / Water Supply / Water Data .