Whiplash weather is nothing to tried-and-true Texans, who are used to the roller coaster of temperatures that rocket us to insufferable highs and catapult us to frigid lows, with the occasional head-spinning 360 in the middle.
The weather is notoriously unpredictable here, and sometimes even severe. Almost every year, the Dallas area will experience the entire spectrum of weather events, from tornados to freezes and floods to droughts. Here were the most extreme North Texas weather days in 2024:
The Hottest Day: Aug. 6
We had a mild summer in some ways, relatively speaking. Mild still means just above boiling point for us, though. The highest temperature this summer was 104 degrees, which isn’t nearly hot enough to cook an egg on the sidewalk but is hot enough to be appropriate for shorts at the office.If you have never been to Dallas, let me describe their weather. It's 104F and always a breeze blowing. You would think that's helpful but it's hot wind. .. like someone following you around with a blow dryer blowing hot air on you all the time.
— Angie ⚽🏆🍻 (@AngieBuckland) August 6, 2024
The Coldest Day: Jan. 15
Dallasites were rightfully traumatized by the freeze of 2021, so when the temperature drops below freezing now, pearls are clutched. A January arctic blast brought less than an inch of snowfall but still managed to shut down roads, schools and society in North Texas. It’s a good thing we have the country’s best meteorologist to guide us through the winter weather. Though the freeze wasn’t as bad as years past, it still stung, and in the words of WFAA's Pete Delkus via Twitter: “7 p.m. update: Air hurts.”
The Windiest Day: May 25
The windiest day of the year culminated in 165 mph tornados that hit the uppermost part of DFW. Four cyclones touched down across Cooke and Denton counties, causing massive destruction across rural towns and killing seven people.
“It has been a harrowing week with lives lost, property reduced to rubble and the hopes and dreams of Texas families and small businesses ... crushed by storm after storm,” said Gov. Greg Abbott while visiting Valley View, one of the affected towns.
Days later, high winds and rain caused regional power outages that lasted days. Dallas County Judge Clay Lewis Jenkins signed a declaration of disaster when 322,000 people were left without power from the storms.
“The damage itself is not unusual because we do have straight-line winds frequently here in North Texas, but the extent of the damage and the number of the customers affected is unusual,” Lewis Jenkins said during a news conference about the outages. “I’ve been doing this for 14 years, and I don’t remember ever having a multi-day event quite like this one.”
The Wettest Day: May 30
Currently experiencing a moderate drought, you'd think we wouldn’t get much rain, but you’d be wrong. The year just ending was one of the rainiest in Texas history. Some areas of Dallas witnessed up to three inches of rainfall in a single day. Bad news for a city that turns into a mini Schlitterbahn at the sight of a light sprinkle.
The Day With the Most Hail: March 14
A hail storm that ripped through parts of Denton County took no mercy on the windshields of North Texans. Baseball-sized chunks of ice fell from the sky and ravaged roofs in their wake. The storm intensified into a small tornado. No fatalities were recorded.
Look at the size of this hail and the damage it left behind in Lantana, TX (a northern suburb of Ft. Worth) Thursday afternoon!#txwx pic.twitter.com/GllvRrBi6N
— WeatherNation (@WeatherNation) March 15, 2024
Honorable Mention: July 26
Though not extreme weather, it just doesn't seem right to reel off disasters without mentioning the series of earthquakes that shook the ground downtown in July. The Dallas Morning News reported that the seismic activity was likely caused by oil and gas work. Still, it was pretty crazy.
