Home of the Alamo, San Antonio is a modern city with a population of 1.4 million people. It’s the second largest city in Texas and the seventh most populous city in the United States.
In the past 124 years there have only been 31 instances of a snowfall; technically a snowfall is anything where the snow persists for some period of time, even if it’s only the smallest trace.
They had less than 1.25 cm (½ inch) of snow in 2011, and their all-time record stands at 40 cm (16 inches) in 1985. This video demonstrates just how ill-prepared southern cities often are to face unusual problems.
Unfortunately this video shows that it is one of the most flash flood prone (language warning) areas on the continent. In one week, ending July 7, 2002, they received 0.9 meters (about 3 feet) of rainfall. There were 12 fatalities and massive flooding.
The Climate
San Antonio has a humid subtropical climate, resulting in dry, cool winters and hot, humid summers. As explained, the rain can be torrential for short periods. It’s also a likely spot for tornadoes since the prevailing conditions can draw up warm moist air from the Gulf Coast.
Speaking more generally, the peak rainy season occurs in May and June, and then tapers off before rising to another smaller peak in October. January is generally the coolest month at an average of 9.6° C (49.3° F), while July and August vie for supremacy as the hottest month averaging 29.4° C (85° F).
Looking Around
In a stunning departure from every other visited city, there are no apparent webcams in San Antonio, Texas. Perhaps it is a locally enforced bylaw forbidding transmitting images. The situation is so extreme that San Antonio doesn’t even possess a live feed traffic camera system.
The nearest available compromise-system is presented by KENS5 Eyewitness News. It appears to be a fixed camera system, supplied on a map interface which, when you hover over them, provides a still image that is refreshed roughly every six minutes.
Your best bet to explore San Antonio is to seek out photographic images. It looks like Google Maps has managed to photograph all of their streets with a small fleet of GoogleMobiles, so you can pretend to be a driving tourist and have a look around. It’s difficult to imagine that a city of over a million residents doesn’t have any live webcams!
Being Informed
Naturally AccuWeather has a broad array of information including a brief video forecast for the next five days, yet another version of radar for the area, and long-range predictions of major Continental Systems that could impinge on the area. And if astronomy is your thing, they will keep you apprised of that too! December’s notes, for example, talk about the Geminid meteor shower due on the 13th this year.
As always, weather.com provides daily reports, with hourly predictions if you’re planning an outdoor wedding; they also provide 5-day and 10-day predictions, notes about what to expect on the weekend, and live updates of growing systems that could pose a threat. They even have a graphic showing sunrise/moonrise, the highest point in the sky that the Sun/Moon reach, and sunset/moonset over the course of the day as well as the current position of the Sun.
One last thing
The weather in San Antonio may be intimidating once in a while, but there is a lot of history and culture to explore there. It can act as a hub if you plan to explore the area, with famous places like Laredo, Corpus Christi, weird old Austin, or you can even go over to Houston and marvel at the science of the Space Center and Mission Control, which served for so many of NASA’s space missions.
So visit San Antonio and “remember the Alamo”, but don’t forget the nice restaurants and attractions for visitors.