Houston, Texas, is noted as being the world’s most air conditioned city. Except for those that simply can’t avoid it, like landscaping professionals, almost everyone works in air conditioned comfort in Houston.
It is inevitably described as hot, and the air as being swampy, and heavy with moisture. Its classification is humid-subtropical (no surprise there). Its most important historical role has been as Mission Control for the space program.
For those who weren’t yet alive in 1970, to experience the real thing, perhaps you saw the Ron Howard movie in 1995 about the Apollo 13 mission. The most famous line of which was: “Houston, we have a problem”.
“Houston, we DO have a problem”
Ordinarily its denizens find the climate comfortable, or at least tolerable, but the sheer amount of water in the area is enough to make Californian’s green with envy. One laconic observer noted that “instead of building oil pipelines, we should be building a water pipeline to California. They could use it.”
They receive 50 inches of rain annually, with a record of just a little over 6 feet (1.85 m) in 1900; and springtime is Tornado Time in Houston. And once the Hurricane Season starts in the Atlantic, they need to prepare for heavy rain and significant damage.
The downside to this is that many, many times per year its citizens are faced with flash flood warnings. 2015 has not been kind to Houston, with many of its streets awash with flood waters. This video gives a pretty solid perspective, about the typical weather lately.
About a third of the year is spent above 90 °F (32 °C), and generally four days over 100° F (38° C). The current record is 109 °F (43 °C). Spring and autumn are spent in the 60° to 80° F (14-27° C) range. Winter, on the whole, would probably be deemed quite acceptable by most northerners with temperatures in the range of 63 °F (17 °C) and the low 43° F (6 °C).
Live Houston Weather Cameras
If you go to weatherbug you can (for example) see the Cornelius Science Academy in Houston. Click the PLAY button in the camera animation box and then select to see what’s happened over the last hour, or the last 24 hours, or over the last 30 days, though the latter is rather time consuming to load, so skip it unless you actually need it. You can click the small sample image of the next Featured camera and it will take you to Eastwood Academy, then University of Houston-Main Campus, and even Minute Maid Park, where if you’re lucky, you can watch the stadium roof open or close. At the Rhodes School, the camera is positioned in such a way that you can watch the sunrise every morning.
Live Houston Web Cameras
The Houston Museum of Natural Science provides this live camera view of the area.
Don’t miss the Houston Zoo and all sorts of live 24 hour webcams for watching the gorilla habitat, the giraffes’ yard and the giraffe feeding platform, the chimpanzees, both the elephant pool and the elephant yard, as well as the flamingo habitat, with more cameras being added soon.
Of course if you want to watch the roads this is the place to go. It’s easily selectable so you can check the freeways, the streets, the Ferry, or simply go here where you can simply click on any camera that’s an interest to you on the roadways. This view tells you about road closures, where accidents exist, where cars are stalled, and most importantly, which roads are flooded.
Weather Sources
ABC13.com provides Doppler weather radar that tracks tornadoes, flooding, lightning, and severe weather systems, updating every 5 minutes, much as you would expect in such a volatile area. As well as a 1 minute forecast for those in a hurry, an extended forecast telling you what to expect over the next week.
KHOU.com is happy to provide 36 different Doppler radar images throughout Texas and most of the Gulf Coast as well as regional radars all the way up to the national level. They also support a feature called Hurricane Central to keep you apprised of everything that’s happening now, and allowing you to review what has happened in the last 24 hours. There Alerts Page Is updated every 2 to 3 minutes with flood warnings and other advisories. Weather.com provides all the usual information from daily, hourly, to weekly, and 10 day forecasts, typical weather, what to expect, and of course historical information so you can try to make a logical extrapolation four events this year. It also has the Sun and Moon rise graphic, and a regular assortment of images submitted by the public.
It’s often said by residents that if you don’t like the weather of Houston, just wait 5 minutes. It’s very changeable. If you don’t mind the four of the last seven major hurricanes made landfall there, maybe you’d like to move there. Or perhaps you just like to slip in between the storms, visit all the space related paraphernalia, museums, zoos, and cultural exhibitions, and then dash away again, before the weather changes.