AUSTIN (KXAN) — It was a year of extremes: 2023 brought Austin’s hottest summer on record and also the worst ice storm on record. More than 4,000 acres were burned by wildfires across Central Texas, and the city experienced its costliest hailstorm ever.
Here’s a look back at some of the biggest weather stories of the year.
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Worst ice storm on record
At 6:35 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 31, Meteorologist Kristen Currie told KXAN viewers, “This Winter Storm Warning has expanded and extended. The icing threat is worsening. It’s only going to get worse through the day.”
The storm she was referring to would become Austin’s worst ice storm in recorded history.
Camp Mabry, Austin’s official weather reporting site, received 0.69″ of ice, a new record. That was the second-highest total in all of Central Texas, behind a report of 0.80″ near Llano. Chief Meteorologist David Yeomans called the totals “mind-blowing.” The impact was severe.
“I cannot recall an ice event like this, within the city limits of Austin, in which so much ice accumulated on power lines. Not even one,” KXAN Meteorologist Jim Spencer said. “We’ve had some ice storms, yes. We’ve got some bad ones, maybe worse ones toward the Hill Country. But in the city, I do not recall an ice storm since I started back in 1990 that put this much ice across such a wide area of Austin.”
The weight of ice caused tree limbs to fall across the area. The Texas A&M Forest Service estimated the storm damaged 10.5 million trees in the Austin area, or 30% of the city’s tree canopy.
The city went on to collect more than 170,000 tons of debris as Austinities cleaned up the mess, enough to fill Q2 Stadium more than four times over.
As tree limbs fell, power lines came down with them, plunging thousands into the dark — and the cold. At the peak at 3:49 p.m. on Feb. 1, a total of 173,879 Austin Energy customers were without power, approximately 31.6% of all the utility’s customers. Some of them waited 10 days for power to return.
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In total, Austin Energy data showed almost 375,000 customer outages were reported between Feb. 1 and Feb. 12.
The city’s response to the ice storm came under intense scrutiny, eventually leading to the firing of City Manager Spencer Cronk on Feb. 15. Austin Energy General Manager Jackie Sargent later retired at the end of March. An after-action report released in October detailed several improvements needed in future emergency response efforts, from communications to shelter management.
“The magnitude of damage caused communication barriers and breakdowns immediately after the storm,” the report read. “For example, due to the complexity and volume of the outages, Austin Energy and other utility providers could not provide its customers with accurate estimated times of restoration.”
Hottest year on record
Anyone hoping that an ice storm meant the rest of the year would be colder than usual was in for a rude awakening. In fact, 2023 was Austin’s hottest year on record, with weather data available back to the 1890s.
The average temperature this year, with every daily high and low taken into account, was 72.2°, beating the previous record of 72.1°, set in 2017.
The summer was particularly hot. In fact, it was the hottest meteorological summer — defined as the months of June, July and August — ever recorded at Austin’s airport.
In those three months, the average temperature at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport was 87.1°, beating the previous record of 86.7°, set in 1954. Camp Mabry’s average summer temperature was 89.4°, just 0.1° shy of tying the record there, set in 2011.
The abnormally hot summer can be seen in the chart below, which shows how high temperatures each day compared to average. Days in red were hotter than normal.
July was the hottest on record at Camp Mabry. August and September were both the second-hottest, and June was the sixth-hottest.
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Austin hit the triple digits for the first time on June 9, about a month ahead of normal, and went on to do it 80 days in total. Only 2011 saw more days at or above 100°.
Austin set a new record for most triple-digit days in a row. Every day between July 8 and Aug. 21 hit at least 100° — 45 days in total. The previous record was 27 days, set in 2011.
The airport hit 100° for 44 days in a row, between July 29 and Sept. 10, almost doubling the previous record of 23, set in both 1951 and 1998.
Extreme heat was the name of the game this year. Camp Mabry reached 110° on Aug. 17 — tying as the third-hottest temperature ever recorded in the city. The heat index reached a staggering 118° on June 21, a new all-time record.
And we set not one but two new records for most days at or above 105° in a row, first between July 10 and 20, and again between Aug. 4 and 15. The previous record of nine days had stood for 100 years.
Summer of wildfires
In addition to being incredibly hot, the summer of 2023 was also incredibly dry. July and August combined saw just 0.15″ of rain at Camp Mabry, more than 4.5″ below average.
The hot, dry conditions contributed to several wildfires across Central Texas. Almost 60 fires sparked throughout the 15-county KXAN viewing area this year, burning more than 4,000 acres in total.
The largest fire was the Moore Peak Fire, which burned 707 acres in Llano County in mid July. The Texas A&M Forest Service said the fire was likely started by someone operating machinery.
A Hays County home was destroyed in the Oak Grove Fire in August, which burned 365 acres near San Marcos. Tosca Cesaretti told KXAN’s Kelly Wiley her land was destroyed, but thankfully her house was saved.
“When we left yesterday, fleeing for our lives, I was so numb, feeling like I had lost everything,” Cesaretti said. “When we were leaving, we felt the heat. There were embers falling.”
Source: https://t-tees.com
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