San Antonio residents who were hoping to enjoy a cool autumn while carving pumpkins or baking pan de muerto are in for a disappointment — meteorologists and climatologists are predicting a warm fall season across the South.
Despite the arrival of El Niño, a climate pattern that typically brings with it colder and wetter weather across the Southern U.S., the next three months will likely experience above-average temperatures, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center.
“Probabilities for above-average temperature persist across much of the southern half of the nation during the latter parts of September … so it appears that these regions will continue to experience summer-like temperatures for at least another month,” the U.S. climate outlook for September 2023 stated.
That may not sound surprising, considering that San Antonio just experienced its hottest August on record and its second-hottest summer on record following last year’s brutal summer.
Late last month, San Antonio broke the record for the most days in a single year to exceed 100 degrees, which had been set in 2009 at 59 days. As of Monday, San Antonio has experienced 74 days with temperatures at 100 or above in 2023, and there’s no guarantee that number is done climbing, said Keith White, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
“That record has been completely shattered,” he said. “It’s going to be rewritten from here.”
That said, temperatures will cool off slightly this week, White added, dipping from the scorching triple-digit days we’ve seen so far this month into the 90s, with a possible chance of rain heading into the weekend.
“We’ll definitely start to see a downward trend here,” he said. “Right now we’re still near seasonal normals somewhat, but the Climate Prediction Center has said we will likely see the above normal temperatures continuing through the last week of September, first week of October.”
Rainfall is also expected to be about average, although currently the chances San Antonio will see either more rainfall or less rainfall this autumn are equal, according to the Climate Prediction Center. That just means there’s about a 33% chance across the board San Antonio will see more, average, or less rain, White explained. In other words, it’s hard to say how much rain we will see.
This past weekend saw a few scattered showers around San Antonio, however only about 0.38 inches to 0.75 inches were measured at different points across the city, White said.
“We could definitely use a lot more,” he said, adding that San Antonio could see showers this weekend, as a frontal boundary hanging out to the north wavers through the region.
