First Warning Weather Team releases Summer Outlook 2025

AUSTIN (KXAN) — When it comes to summer in Central Texas, most people want to know two things: (1) how hot will it be? and (2) will we have enough water?

So much of what to expect in the summer can depend on what has happened in the preceding seasons. The KXAN First Warning Weather team researched the factors influencing our hottest season and discussed them together while boating around Lake Travis, still desperately in need of water going into the summer months.

Winter and spring precipitation can influence summer heat

“We know that from January through the end of April it was a drier than normal season and most, if not all, of our hottest summers correlate to that precipitation anomaly,” Meteorologist Tommy House said.

In fact, December through April precipitation was down 30% compared to average, missing out on more than an typical month’s worth of rainfall during those four months.

Some of our hottest summers on record have come after abnormally dry spring and winter seasons.

“When you think about the science of it — If you get springtime rainfall, that rain, that water is in the soil. We get into the summertime months, it takes some of that heat energy to evaporate that water before it goes directly to warming the air. The less of that water to evaporate, the more of that energy goes to heating the air. Without springtime rainfall, you’re looking at no delay in that summertime heat and, unfortunately, we’re getting a taste of that,” Meteorologist Kristen Currie added.

Drought spreading and lakes responding

The lack of rainfall has corresponded with a gradually worsening drought over the last few months.

“One of the things that was kind of astonishing when we looked up these numbers …100% of Central Texas was in some type of drought condition [through early May] compared to previous years when it wasn’t this bad,” Meteorologist Freddy Vela said.

“Nothing spells that more than the last nine months. We have had below normal precipitation [each month] going back from August 2024 all the way through April 2025,” forecaster Rich Segal added.

The worsening drought, up until recently, and 9 months of below average rainfall has had a rather obvious impact on our lakes and the two bodies of water that serve as the primary water supply for Central Texas.

“Looking at the combined storage of Lakes Travis and Buchanan at the beginning of the year and at the beginning of May was actually higher than at this point last year, which you would think is a good thing, but the inflows are actually lower than our drought of record, which means that the water coming in is not coming in at any good pace at all, which would mean a downward trend in our lake levels fairly rapidly as we head into summer,” Chief Meteorologist Nick Bannin said.

Below you can see the combined lake storage over the last 12 months, which was given a boost by some significant storms in the late spring and summer of last year, only to continue to drop consistently since last fall.

But the lack of rainfall in the last few months shows up in our combined inflows, which are some of the lowest year-to date according to the Central Texas Water Coalition

This means that with such little water rushing into our lakes as we head into a season where we use so much water, that lake levels may drop incredibly quickly.

Last time Lake Travis was full was back in late 2018 into early 2019 after the Llano River flood.

Water conservation is key

The two main drains on the water storage in Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan are evaporation and irrigation. In fact, according to LCRA, up to 70% of home water use during the summer comes from irrigation, which means there’s a lot in our control that we can do to reduce the amount of water we’re taking out of our lakes.

We can mitigate water loss by reducing our personal use, investing in native plants that require less water, watering wisely when we have to (late night or early morning) or swapping out our landscaping for zero-scaping to almost eliminate an individual’s irrigation needs altogether.

Hot summer pattern

The pervasive weather pattern that sets up during the summer also plays a major role in determining the summer forecast.

The long-range outlook from the CFS Computer Model suggests an average placement of our “summer heat dome” just to our west, centered over eastern New Mexico. This would make for a hotter summer than last summer, but potentially, not as miserable as it could be if the heat dome of high pressure were situated right overhead.

Warming climate

Climate change continues to play a major role in extreme heat in Central Texas.

Our summers have been getting hotter. According to NASA, scientists have “high confidence” in continued heating for decades in large part due to the burning of man-made fossil fuels. All seasons are rising, including our hottest season…summer.

The EPA expects Texas to have 3 or 4 times as many triple digit days in 2086 as we did in 2016.

According to Climate Central, a non-profit independent group of scientists communicating climate information, summers in Austin have warmed an average of 4.7º F since 1970.

People can expect our warming climate to continue to put it’s thumb on the scale toward more heat this summer, too.

Heat safety

Despite Mother Nature working against us, tricks to beat the heat include wearing a wide-brimmed hat, drinking plenty of water (before, during and after being outdoors), paying attention to your body, and choosing loose-fitting clothing, light-colored clothing.

Don’t forget your pet! Walk them early in the day or late in the evening when asphalt temperatures are safer times.

Wildfire danger

The prospects of a drier and hotter summer would only serve to increase our wildfire danger. Less water in the ground usually means less humidity in the air due to less water available for evaporation. Less humidity in the air allows for hotter temperatures while drying out vegetation more quickly than a hot and humid day would. Drier vegetation burns more quickly in the event of a fire.

All this comes together to bring Central Texas a higher-than-average expectation for wildfires this summer, unless we can get more beneficial rain than we currently expect OR if rain this summer is reasonably spread out, helping to prevent our vegetation from drying out completely.

Tropics are a wildcard

While an above average Atlantic Hurricane Season is expected again this year, the phrase “all it takes is one” continues to be important to any benefits or dangers we see locally from the tropics. We can get tropical systems inland during a quieter season, but we can also miss out on any tropical rains during busier seasons.

Should a tropical system give us a soaking rain in the middle of the summer, then all bets are off for rainfall and heat predictions.

Our First Warning Weather Summer Forecast:

Generally speaking we expect a hotter and drier summer than normal in Central Texas. An average summer sees 8.38″ of rain at Austin’s Camp Mabry and we expect, barring a tropical system, that we’ll get less than that.

Here are our guesses for this year:

As for triple digit days? There’s a variety of predictions among our team, but they’re all above the annual average of 29. We’ve already had two triple digits in mid-May that will be part of our annual total.

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