Texas weather is unpredictable. This is not exactly a news flash. Texans know that scorching hot weather any time can quickly change by afternoon with the arrival of a cold front or a fast-moving storm that brings instant flooding.

There is truth to the old saying: "If you are tired of the Texas weather, just wait a minute. It will change."

All this makes for a challenge for meteorologists such as LCRA’s Bob Rose, whose job is to predict the weather so LCRA and communities throughout the Colorado River basin can better manage the effect of our changing weather patterns.

A few months ago, Rose was among those who predicted that the Central and South Central Texas region’s more than year-long drought would lessen during the fall as wetter weather would arrive, courtesy of El Niño. (An El Niño is a regular weather pattern characterized by the unusual warming of ocean waters between the west coast of South America and the International Date Line. El Niños typically bring our region wet and cool autumns and winters followed by dry and hot summers.)

Hurricane season a no-show
You might also remember that some weather forecasters nationwide predicted a busy hurricane season in 2006 — an alarming prospect a year after the devastating hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It didn’t happen. We had little rain. The hurricane season was a virtual no-show.

“Well, the rain didn’t come like we thought,” Rose shrugged. There are a number of reasons to explain the continued dry weather. Perhaps the best is this El Niño hasn't behaved like typical El Niños. It's just another illustration of just how plain difficult it is to predict our weather.

For sure, the ongoing drought has continued to take its toll. Lakes Travis and Buchanan – the only water supply reservoirs in the chain of Highland Lakes that LCRA manages — have fallen to their lowest levels in recent memory. In December, Lake Travis dropped to 644 feet above sea level, its lowest level in 42 years.

National Weather Service's National Drought Monitor reports that Central and South Central Texas continues to suffer from a severe-to-extreme drought. The dry weather has been almost unbroken since spring 2005. Depending on how you measure, the intensity of the current drought rivals some of the worst ones in recorded Texas history.

Stay with game plan
If we were doing Monday Morning quarterbacking, it’d be time to reassess our game plan. Such is life for any quarterback — or Texas weather man. But despite the lack of rain, Rose is sticking with his forecast. Wetter weather may be delayed but it's still on its way.

“I’m encouraged we will see a wetter weather pattern in the first few months of the year,” Rose said. The current El Niño pattern will eventually have an impact on our region. “Using the past as our guide, this will contribute to more frequent rains in ’07,” he said.

When? Sometime this spring is Rose’s best prediction. Only a fool would try to pinpoint it too exactly, he joked. (Now is a good time to tell readers that Rose has a Magic Eight Ball on his desk. It’s a gag gift from a colleague who wondered if it might help Rose predict our unpredictable weather.)

So sit tight. Stay tuned.

Until the rains come, you'd better keep in mind another saying: Texas weather is constant. It’s marked by continued drought — punctuated by occasional flash floods.