{"id":35205,"date":"2014-03-18T09:39:43","date_gmt":"2014-03-18T14:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=35205"},"modified":"2014-03-18T09:39:43","modified_gmt":"2014-03-18T14:39:43","slug":"next-3-months-huge-in-preventing-brutal-texas-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/03\/18\/next-3-months-huge-in-preventing-brutal-texas-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"Next 3 Months ‘Huge’ In Preventing Brutal Texas Summer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

EPA\/LARRY W. SMITH \/LANDOV<\/p>

A small pool of water is all that remains in a portion of Bridgeport Lake in September 2013.<\/p><\/div>\n

Texans looking for relief from the drought are eagerly anticipating the chances of an El Ni\u00f1o <\/a>event starting this summer, which could bring much wetter conditions. But the focus should actually be on the near-term, according to\u00a0Victor Murphy, climate service program manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Fort Worth<\/a>. Murphy\u00a0says that the next three months, April, May and June, will be crucial to staving off another critically dry\u2014and hot\u2014summer.<\/p>\n

April, May and June are typically the wettest months of the Texas year, and little to no rain could lead to dry soil and hot days.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens during those three months, between now and June, is going to be just huge going forward into the summertime, but unfortunately we do not have any kind of a clear climate signal to hang our hats on with regards to making a forecast,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The bad news\u2014Murphy says\u2014is that right now, the weather forecast for the next three months has equal chances of below normal rainfall, near normal rainfall, and above normal rainfall.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s reservoirs are only 65 percent full<\/a>, their lowest level for this time of year in decades. Murphy says if El Ni\u00f1o does occur, and Texas is hit with lots of precipitation as a result, it could be enough to bring the majority of the state out of the drought.<\/p>\n

A recent study<\/a> from Stanford University put the chances of El Ni\u00f1o returning at 76 percent. Murphy believes it\u2019s lower than that, but if it does come back, the rainy aftermath won\u2019t be felt until the winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to take quite a bit of precipitation above normal to get Texas completely out of the drought, but I think parts of the state that are sort of fringe-y as far as drought goes\u2026could probably work their way out of it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\"Precipitation<\/a>

Victor Murphy \/ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<\/p>

Precipitation records for the last three years in Wichita Falls, Texas, one of the areas hit hardest by the drought. The brown line is the expected precipitation level, and the green area is actual levels.<\/p><\/div>\n

However, according to Murphy, even with El Ni\u00f1o, areas of the state hit hardest, like the Texas panhandle, might never see total recovery from the drought, which began in October 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texans looking for relief from the drought are eagerly anticipating the chances of an El Ni\u00f1o event starting this summer, which could bring much wetter conditions. But the focus should actually be on the near-term, according to\u00a0Victor Murphy, climate service program manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Fort Worth. Murphy\u00a0says that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":169,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[61,342,85],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35205"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35213,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35205\/revisions\/35213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}