For the first time, the Gulf of Mexico didn’t fall below 73° this winter

Weather Bell

Houston meteorologist Matt Lanza recently noted that a city on the upper Texas coast, Galveston, had been setting a staggering number of high temperature records this winter. About one-fourth of the days saw record highs, so Lanza reached out to the local forecast office of the National Weather Service to see if they had any concerns about thermometer calibration or recent land-use changes at Scholes Field in Galveston, where the temperature is recorded. No, he was told, it has just been that "sort of winter."

From the period of November through February, Galveston ended up setting a total of 31 record high temperatures. And it is not like Galveston is a recently thrown-up beach community; the city it has a history that goes back two centuries. It formerly served as the capital of the Republic of Texas, and it has formal meteorological records that date all the way back to 1874.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments