Candy Cane wrote:I think the biggest change in temps around here over the past few years has been the very warm overnight lows. We consistently stay higher than our average at night.
Definitely. The UHI at IAH has made the current 1971-2000 climate normals virtually useless. Overnight lows have been getting so warm at IAH, sometimes even Hobby Airport has a cooler overnight low than IAH (for example, this morning). I can tell you that it was not 83 degrees this morning on the north side of town. I was up around 7:30 this morning when the outdoor thermometer read 80 degrees, which was the same as Hooks. Hooks is a much better representation of what temperatures are like WHERE PEOPLE ACTUALLY LIVE north of the Beltway
Check out this morning's low temps:
Hooks 80
Sugar Land 79
Hobby 81
College Station 79
Conroe 78
Huntsville 78
IAH 83
lolwut? Thanks to IAH being an awful climate site, today's low for the city of Houston will officially be 83 degrees.
I mean, yeah, it's only a couple of degrees off of what it should be. But, when this site is consistently doing it every single day of the month, the temperature departure is suddenly out of whack compared to nearby sites (sometimes up to 2 or 3 degrees warmer than surrounding departures). This is because of the usage of the 1971-2000 climate normals at IAH. This period was before UHI really became a big issue at IAH over the last decade thanks to all of the development that has occured at the airport (more concrete, less trees)
Pardon my french, but that is f'n ridiculous.
If you look around at other locations that are not IAH, like Hooks or Sugar Land, there hasn't been a change in overnight lows for the past couple of years.
This is what happens when you designate an official climate site 5 ft. from a runway.
