After a climatologist posted a report plotting the driest and wettest parts of the country for the month of October, meteorologists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are clarifying that the report is not predictive.
Meteorologist Brett Williams at the National Weather Service for the San Antonio and Central Texas area, says the climatology report plotted out the driest areas of the country, and the wettest.
“A lot of locations in our area – in the San Antonio and Austin area – October tends to be the wettest month of the year. So that graphic he put out wasn’t necessarily a forecast for wet weather so much as just a climatology showing that October for a lot of areas around here is the wettest month of the year,” Williams says.
Checking the monthly and seasonal outlook from the Climate Prediction Center at NOAA, Williams says there’s a chance of rain Thursday night and Friday, but … “For the month of October they have our area as near-normal precipitation. The short term for any major flooding event however is definitely possible. Last October we had a very heavy rain event that produced some major flash flooding.”
Meteorologists are expecting somewhat drier than normal conditions in Central Texas for the rest of 2016, with slightly above normal temperatures. And Hurricane Matthew, which is crossing the Caribbean, is expected to make a northerly turn and impact the East Coast, but miss the Gulf of Mexico.