Texas is undergoing an increase in extreme weather events and the trend looks to continue. NBC 5’s Samantha Davies has the details.
A recent report put out by the Texas A&M State Climatologist and Texas 2036, a non profit organization dedicated to securing Texas’ prosperity through the bicentennial and beyond says that our extreme weather is getting wilder.
Texas is undergoing an increase in extreme weather events and the trend looks to continue. Intense weather events from heat, fires and floods impact almost every part of our lives.
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WATCH HERE“The trouble with climate change is it affects all sorts of different things, so we have the economic impacts from for example increased cost of insurance in the state of Texas, increased cost of retrofitting and dealing with changes in risk both along the coast and inland. There’s health risks potentially” says our State Climatologist Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon.
100 degree days will become four times as common by 2036 as they were in the 1970s. This poses a health threat as well an increased demand for energy. Hospitalizations from heat related illness are rising as well as the amount of air conditioning we need. Texas Department of State Health Services data shows that a record number of Texans died from the heat in 2023.
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SIGN UP The threat for wildfires is going up. February 2024, the Smokehouse Creek fire burned more than a million acres in the panhandle, making it the largest fire ever in Texas history. Wildfire season in the western half of the state is increasing and expanding but now the eastern half of the state is at a greater risk. “With higher temperatures the forests will dry our faster and so the risk is going to increase” says Neilson-Gammon.
Hotter weather plays a role in intense periods of droughts. More severe droughts coupled with more heavy rain events is leading to an increased risk of urban flooding especially here in the Dallas Ft. Worth area.
August 21-22nd 2022 parts of Dallas received over 15 inches of rain. Water was waist high in parts of Dallas. There were several high water rescues and road closures. The flooding left behind over 10 millions dollars in damage. It is not just extreme events like that- storms dropping just a few inches of rain have caused flooding in parts of the city.
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Dallas has been expanding increasing the amount of concrete. This causes more runoff. Heavy, frequent rain events also do not give the soil much time to absorb the water. Adding more flood control measures takes time in a city already established.
“That’s hard to do when you’ve already got the urban area built up. You can take advantage of the knowledge in the suburban areas and increase resiliency there“ said Nielsen-Gammon.
Scientists are fairly confident in the fact that these extreme weather events will happen more frequently. Studies are updated every time we have a big weather event and the main findings have stayed consistent and haven’t changed.
Nielsen-Gammon says “we have a lot of knowledge about the climate system. We can see the direction its going in and that gives us more confidence that we can tell what we have to do to deal with in the future”
