I asked this same question on 2/9/16. In searching the records I see that the temperature dropped briefly to 31 degrees at 6 AM on 2/7/16 with no freezes after that.

So it seems like we've had these 'hit and run' freezes for a couple of years in a row now. Will this year be the same? I know there is no way to know for sure, but since I like to live dangerously (garden wise anyway) I'm counting the days until early/mid February's 10 day forecast.

How about y'all?

The devastating "Thundersleet" in early March 2014 and freezes in March 2015 mean I'll never trust far NW Austin weather... I won't take the chance but you could win the bet in San Antonio, Roselee! Good luck ;-)

Waiting until after the March 15 average freeze date to move things out is safer, but is not always a sure thing. Does anyone remember about 10/15 years ago when there was a damaging freeze in April in San Antonio?

Accuweather long range "predictions" were just started in the last year or two, and are a well known joke. Sort of like the Farmer's Almanac. You can't predict weather with any accuracy more than a week or so out. You CAN predict climate means, but that's very different than weather. You can see the criticism laid out in their Wikipedia page. Their long range forecasts have been verified to be largely wrong. Remarkably, it has been verified that their long range forecasts aren't even climatologically accurate.

This will out me as a weather statistics nerd with too much time on my hands. I cropped & combined the annual NWS charts for SA Airport for last 12 years. Top left is 2007, bottom right is 2018. (hoping I got it to fit in the Houzz posting parameters without getting re-sized; each .png should be 832 pixels wide)

The smooth green band in the middle is the daily average hi & low. The jagged darker overlay is the actual reading for that day. The all-time record high is the jagged salmon colored spikes at top. The all-time record low is the jagged purple spikes at bottom. There's a blue line at 32 F.

Daninthedirt, thank you. I wasn't putting a lot of faith in those long range weather predictions. Just hoping ...

Dan H, it took me a few minutes, but I'm starting to figure out the graphs and follow the trends. Thank you. Did you happen to find the date and how low the temperature went in that instance in April where San Antonio had a significant freeze? Just curious. No biggy. I searched, but didn't have the patience to keep on until I found it.

Dan H., those are nice plots. Show pretty clearly that, at least at the airport, there is a pretty good chance of frost in early March. I think the formal stats for Stinson airport from 1981-2010 climate normals say that the day with 50% chance of frost is out to February 24. Not completely clear why your curves look colder than that. Maybe there is a climactic temperature hole at SAT.

Ragna, the readily available online graphs only go back to 2005. The April freeze you mentioned might be the 2 consecutive days in 2007. More exact numbers are probably somewhere on weather.gov.

http://www.weather.gov/images/ewx/products/climate/climate_KSAT_2007.png

You can see other years (including 2018) by changing the year in the URL. BTW the bottom of the chart shows we got a huge amount of rain from mid-March to mid-Aug that year.

Daninthedirt, good eye! I noticed specifically the average July-August temp data seems to be offset a degree or 2 lower than it really is. The 2nd week of August should show an average high of 99, but zooming in looks more like 97. But this is the best info I could access; the averages look off, but the actual recorded daily readings seem accurate. I've never been a conspiracy theorist, but I used to wonder if the powers-that-be wanted to make it appear not as hot here. I also check Randolph's NWS data as I'm equidistant to it and SAT.

Other cities can get their info at http://www.weather.gov/

Click on the region on the map, then click on "Climate and past weather", then "Local data". Then under "1. Location" select the city. Then under "2. Product" select "Temperature graphs". Then under "3. Options" pick the year and select "Annual". Then under "4. View" click Go. Under the 3 horizontal line Chart Context Menu, you can download a bigger image of the graph. (Or something. It took me quite awhile before I found all this.)

Actually, let me take back that comment about unusually low temps. I was reading your plots wrong. What I'm seeing in mid-March is that yes, record low temperatures can be below freezing. But the 50% chance of freeze could indeed be argued to be February 24 or thereabouts. Kind of fascinating that you CAN get a freeze in early April. Very unlikely, and it hasn't happened in the last decade, but it has happened! Boy, I'll bet people lost a lot of tomatoes and peppers that year.

Some trivia & minor corrections: It looks like it didn't quite drop to freezing in 2007. In 2003 it hit 30 at the very end of March, which was the 2nd latest freeze on record.

April 3 1987 was the latest freeze date on record at the airport (plus the following day April 4 it went back down to 33).

Feb 24 is the average last freeze date (going on 1885-2017 data). Feb 28 is the average last freeze date going on their 1981-2010 data. Our last 2 yrs had the fewest freeze days (4 & 5 freeze days the entire winter). There might be some glitches in these myriad #'s here and there.

All info from "All-time weather records for San Antonio area 1885-2017". On the last page it says the observations were taken downtown 1891-1940. Then from Stinson for a year and a half. Then SA Airport since July 1942 (approx 8 miles N of downtown).

Behind my house is a rain overflow holding basin; it probably gets colder there than the front, which has more roads & concrete and houses and morning sun (and not in a deep basin). Meaning, it's not always the same temp as the airport obviously. I check Randolph's readings, and in winter it's often colder than the airport, despite being slightly closer to the Gulf coast. Anyway, I'm ready to plant some new things in a few weeks, about the same time as the Mountain Cedar pollen starts tailing off. Tomatoes will be in pots at first anyway.

Daninthedirt, the April cold spell caused a lot of damage. Everybody had to replant their vegetable gardens and spring flowering plants were killed or damaged. Even the lawns went brown and took a while to come back. The plant nurseries did a booming business that year.

Dan H, I see that dip in April 2007. The charts I found show 35 as the low for April '07. Maybe only parts of San Antonio went to freezing or perhaps a sudden chill could have done the damage.

Edit: Dan H. -- Wow, thank you for the last info! Looks like we were posting near the same time. The history of the earliest last freeze dates are interesting.

As for the April freeze, I'm remembering 1987 when it went down to 31 on April 3. I don't have a very good calendar in my head. At least I wasn't totally off about an April freeze in San Antonio!

As you mention there are are definitely micro climates in close proximity. My house is in a dip where cold air will settle. I'll have cannas frozen in my yard where two blocks up the street nothing was damaged.

whew, taking a quick look at '87, that was a rough week (by south Central Texas standards anyway...wouldn't expect additional kleenex consumption by our co-horts to the west & north). Four record lows in seven days, & may have stretched out beyond that. Glad you made it. One for the books!

There his this micro climate down the road from us. They have tall hills around them but they are low. Sometimes they are 14º lower than temps just a couple of blocks away. It is crazy. They are an area of MANY weather stations being quite wealthy and weather obsessed. Sometimes it is SO BAD that I think they are putting bags of ice around their stations to weird us out. The miss behaving weather stations are all in a strip that follow the crease in the land.

I vaguely recall that unseasonable cold snap 30 years ago. Back then, we all got our forecasts from the TV weatherman (always a man) and this particular weatherman assured everyone that it wouldn't freeze. It did. Many people lost spring crops, and the TV station got LOADS of complaints, aimed at that weatherman. He mysteriously left a month or two later. His name was mud, and perhaps he was fired. I have to assume he just looked at the climatological averages and said to himself "No way is it going to freeze in April!" Of course, weather prediction is vastly better now than it was then. That being said, it sure isn't good enough to make responsible predictions for more than a week or so out.

I miss those days. The guy in Austin was so good at drawing the map freehand. He was very rarely wrong. Not the weather dramatics of today.

I like listening to WEATHERBELL. He is not one for blaming Everything on climate change. He looks into patterns and talks about them. His is a paid service that is used by all sorts of energy services, investors in futures etc, but he does have a daily forecast that is free to cheapskates like me. Scroll down the page past the three heads and you will see 2 videos that are clickable.. Both are very interesting. It takes several times of listening to him to familiarize yourself with his charts and his very east coast humor. Some charts, I still don't understand. He does not dumb things down. He takes it in the chin for his emphasis on weather patterns of old and is a bit vain but I forgive him. LOL.. Part of his research is going back and analyzing analogs from years before. He is right more often than not. Also he forecasted a major February and March cool down after a major January thaw for the country back in October. We will get some but not as bad as further east. He gets annoyed at the people who jump on the boat late and starts screaming climate change when he used stuff he learned in college to forecast things months before.

-"That's it for now. Enjoy the weather . It's the only weather you got."

Uh yeah. Joe Bastardi at WeatherBell is a dyed in the wool climate denialist. "CO2 can't cause global warming!!!" he whines. I too get annoyed at people who jump on the boat late and scream global warming about everything, but I get really annoyed at folks who deny basic physics. Leading climatologists have called Bastardi's claims total rubbish. Beyond that, maybe he can predict weather, but there are sure a lot of things he doesn't understand. BTW, he's the Fox News meteorologist.

Dang, he pretty well dashed my hopes for another early and long spring like we had last year. But what eva' ... "enjoy it" anyway!

I like his site and emphasis on weather patterns and sun cycles. To me, that is basic science that many warmist have forgotten. It helps to make these meteorologist more accurate than those that depend on the very lacking computer models of the IPCU. We were talking weather prediction, were we not? (Lately I find MSNBC, CNN , NPR sadly lacking and just as far from any truth as Fox.) I am not looking for an argument and this is a can of worms that get people in a tizzy.

Solar cycles have very little to do with weather. That's well established. In fact, some of the recent studies show that, if anything, more sunspots and 0.1% less sunlight makes for slightly warmer temperatures in the northern hemisphere. But yes, let's avoid tizzies here.

The birds are REALLY at it this early morning. Maybe they know something the weathermen don't. never know .

... like happy that it's (almost) spring? I'm happy with them. No freezes predicted for the next 10 days ... :-)

I know you’re getting antsy Roselee but no Mountain Laurels are blooming and the pecans and mesquites haven’t broken bud yet. Give it some time

I’m a big fan of bastardi. Yes, solar cycle has much bigger impact than co2. I’ve been studying this stuff for like 15 years. Watts up with that website is much better than websites like skeptical science and so on that truly believe that co2 is the main driver behind “catastrophic climate change”. Dan is pretty much wrong.

Some plants are leafing out already: roses, honeysuckles and black foot daisies... just saying...

Omar

I think I will do my tomatoes but leave them in movable pots.

Ragna, I'm with Joey on this....my mesquites are nowhere near budding, and they are my climatologists! I am in a microclimate and usually up to 10 degrees colder than predicted for San Antonio, and 5+ degrees colder than what is usually predicted on the Weather Channel for Castroville. I always wait for a few weeks after the mesquites bud out.

But, the skunks are out and about! :D

Omar

Oooh, I am seeing a 31º peeking out for next Sunday (not this Sunday) . They can get colder as we get closer. I will be keeping an eye on it.

I just went back to my 10 day forecast and they raised it back up to 34º.

What I just heard about spring here I'm Texas is that it will be dry and our summer will be HOT and dry. Weatherbell used the word drought for Texas. Hmmmmm> drat!!!

It was 24 when I woke up today. We need rain so badly here in the west side of DFW.

It is wet in Houston. I haven’t removed plant covers nor trimmed hardwoods. Tried trimming tropicals and it was such a mess, I stopped.

Wantonamara, I always pay attention to ENSO cycle.... we are in La Nina cycle meaning higher chances of drought condition in Texas. El Nino cycle usually means a wet year for Texas. The wild card is tropical storms that might put a huge dent in drought during La Nina years. It is fairly accurate as I have been paying a close attention to it since 2005 or 2006 when I started taking a very close look at climate weather covering everything. I just hope it is not a repeat of 2011. That was so bad. https://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/climatic-phenomena-pages/enso/

WB just said that the La nina is showing signs of collapsing and we will be in a Midoki El Niño by summer. He is actually blaming the drought and cold winter on the strong hurricanes that we had this last summer. That is what drove him to make his cold winter prediction. His last Saturday forecast was interesting. The only chart he uses that confuses the whole hell out of me is the Manjulian cycle (sp?). I have noticed the La Niña dry/El Niño wet cycle too.. Maybe they both feed into one another. I just am a weather consumer, not a meteorologist. I leave that up to others people. I can hear all those butterfly wings beating causing hurricanes and droughts months latter. I am not good at the science jargon. I guess we can only wait and see what transpires. His analogs of years past are in agreement whit the theories.