According to climate experts, the Dallas-Fort Worth area is in for temperatures that will put this summer in the top 10 hottest ever, while the rest of Texas gets blasted by the heat dome that is currently sitting over Mexico and creeping north of the border day by day. The “anomalously strong” heat dome has broken heat records across Mexico since early May, worsening drought conditions and even killing more than 150 howler monkeys through heat stroke.
The dome’s northern boundary now stretches between Del Rio and Corpus Christie, Victor Murphy, climate services program manager for the National Weather Service Southern Region, told the Observer. In the coming weeks, it is forecasted to “creep” northwest into West Texas and New Mexico.
“The pattern right now is setting up to be very eerily similar to last June, and if you recall that was the start of our heat wave last summer,” Murphy said. “It doesn’t look like that expansion will come as far eastward as North Texas, but it’s a pyrrhic victory. Instead of being maybe the hottest ever, we’ll probably be about where we are now. Somewhere in the top 10.”
Unfortunately for Mexico and South Texas, Murphy believes that heat dome is here to stay throughout the summer.
“Brutal” May Temps Are a Sign of What’s To Come
Dallas-Fort Worth is nearly out of the clutches of the 10th-hottest May on record, although significant amounts of rainfall kept temperatures from skyrocketing even higher. Murphy predicts North Texans are in for a warm summer, but he doubts it’ll be anything like last year’s soul-crushing 21 consecutive days above 100 degrees, which marked the summer of 2023 as the third-hottest in DFW’s history. (Ranking second-hottest is 2011, with 40 consecutive 100-degree days; first is 1980, which saw 42.“I think it’ll sort of be the ebb and flow. Some days it might bubble up and be really hot, but then some rainstorms or a weak cool front could cool us back down again,” Murphy said. “It will easily be above normal for us for summertime, but I don’t think we’ll hit the extremes we saw last summer.”
Still, the statewide forecast is “grim.” Murphy said summertime temperatures usually peak around mid-July, but a Memorial Day heat wave may have started the season off a bit earlier than usual.
On May 26, Del Rio endured its third-hottest day ever on record at 112 degrees. On Memorial Day, the heat index, a measure of the combined effects of temperature and humidity, registered 115 degrees at Houston's Hobby Airport, 4 degrees hotter than the peak summer average. And the swelling temperatures could also be aiding the thunderstorms and tornadoes that have barreled through Dallas and North Texas in the last week.
“We’ve still got a lot of days ahead of us before we even hit our summertime peak,” Murphy said.
Already, energy demand is posing a potentially problematic side effect of the anticipated heat. On May 27, statewide energy demand peaked at 77,126 megawatts. Two years ago, 75,000 megawatts would have been a peak summer record, Murphy said. As “burgeoning” population growth and above-average temperatures plague the state, it is investments in solar and wind energy that are helping power suppliers keeping up with demands, he said.
Last August, megawatt demand hit just under 85,500, and he is “confident” we will exceed that demand in the coming months.
“The question is by how much? And will ERCOT be able to handle it?” Murphy said. “Hopefully, they can.”
