Houston’s 90-degree April temperatures another signal of what climate change will bring – Houston Chronicle

Emily Foxhall,Staff writer

April 6, 2022Updated: April 6, 2022 2:41p.m.

Were you sweating yesterday afternoon? We were.

Temperatures hit 90 degrees on April 5 at Houston Intercontinental Airport for the first time this year.It was an uncomfortablereminder of what scientists predict climate change will bring.

Days will get hotter, triple-digit temperatures will be more common and summer heat will start earlier and last later, according to state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon's expectations.

This comes with all sorts of ramifications, of course, from health impacts for those who work outside to more needfor air conditioning.

Yesterday also wasn't the earliest 90-degree day compared to the past five years, said Lance Wood, who works with the local National Weather Service office. In the horrible year of 2020, we hit the benchmark on March 25.

The highest number of our first 90-degree days have fallen in April, Wood said. It can be as early as February or as late as May.

For comparison, the "normal" expected high for April 5 based on temperatures between 1991 and 2020 is 78 degrees.

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Emily Foxhall covers the environment for the Houston Chronicle. She joined the paper in 2015 as a suburban reporter. She has documented the city's sprawl while playing a key role in the paper's breaking news and enterprise coverage. Her reconstruction of the Santa Fe High School shooting, along with two other colleagues, won first place for feature writing from the Texas Associated Press Managing Editors. She was part of the Chronicle team that was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news in 2017 for coverage of Hurricane Harvey. Soon after, she began roaming the state as the Texas Storyteller.

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Houston's 90-degree April temperatures another signal of what climate change will bring - Houston Chronicle