I didn’t arrive here until 1987, but my cousin who went to UT from 1983 through 1988 told me that the springtimes in Austin (my educated guess is that Houston was under this “spell” as well) were absolutely gorgeous, clear skies the temperatures just right. I experienced that in 1987, and I made several trips in spring 1987 to Houston and back, and the weather in Houston was just as nice. This continued into the spring of 1988, for which I did get to experience in Houston, and once again, very beautiful weather. However, since I was new here, I did not know we were in a drought. We seemed to break out of that drought in 1989, when we had a 10” downpour in May at IAH, and for the first time I experienced a little bit of flooding in the Houston area. Some friends a the church I began attending when I first got here told me that they remembered spring time to always have floods.
My question, what could have “triggered” that string of 6 dry springtimes (1983-1988)?
(Caveat here: I had an offshore summer job when I was at the university in 1984 and stayed with my brother here in Houston. I spent my time back and forth between Houston and Louisiana that summer, but I do remember it being fairly rainy that summer, and even heading back home was interesting. The road between Fort Stockton and El Paso was actually green!)
Haven’t really seen anything like that since.