It’s been anything but a Dry January for San Antonio.
But while the city received some much-needed rain over the past week, most of Bexar County remains in severe drought, with surrounding areas continuing to endure extreme drought conditions.
The San Antonio Airport recorded about 6 inches of rain over the last five days, said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Brady. However, the three days of rainfall in the city did not extend to the Hill Country, where much of the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone is located.
The most recent deluge has made this January San Antonio’s second wettest in recorded history, Brady said. Its wettest was January 1968 with 8.5 inches of rain, he added. No more precipitation in the area is currently forecasted for the next week and a half, Brady said.
“Unfortunately for the whole county, the [Hill Country] didn’t receive nearly as much rainfall, and that’s where most of the recharge comes from for our lakes,” he said. “Most of the rains actually fell on drainage basins that are going to run off to the east.”
The rainfall did slightly raise the Edwards Aquifer’s J-17 monitoring well, which was sitting at roughly 646.5 feet as of Thursday. That’s still below the 650 feet threshold the San Antonio Water System uses to institute Stage 2 watering restrictions.
It is also about 22 feet below the well’s average, according to the Edwards Aquifer Authority, the entity responsible for managing how much water is allowed to be pumped out of the aquifer for the benefit of wildlife living in aquifer-fed springs or the aquifer itself. The J-17 well measured at about 636.7 feet this time last year and got as low as 627.9 feet this summer, San Antonio’s hottest on record, according to the aquifer authority’s data.
As of Thursday, Bexar County remained largely in severe and extreme drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Drought remains prevalent across much of the Southern U.S. and Southeastern U.S., although most of Texas is out of drought conditions, the monitor’s latest map shows.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center, Texas can expect to see average or slightly above-average levels of rain over the next three months, and average or slightly below-average temperatures through April.
While much of San Antonio saw 4 to 6 inches of rain over the past week, it did not go far in erasing the deficit from last year, Brady said. Last year was exceptionally hot and dry for San Antonio, with just 20 inches of rainfall recorded at the San Antonio International Airport; 31 inches is about average for the city per year. The total rainfall for the year so far is about 6.7 inches of rain, with about 1.5 inches being typical by Jan. 25 for San Antonio each year, Brady added.
“We may have very little chance of rain Friday, but it’s not going to be more than maybe a sprinkle,” Brady said of the week’s forecast. “Otherwise, there’s no rain in the forecast until at least the middle of next week starting Feb. 2.”
