What's the WEATHER Like in El Paso Texas? | A Meteorologist's Explanation

What's the WEATHER Like in El Paso Texas? | A Meteorologist's Explanation

Hi, welcome to Living in El Paso, Texas. My name is John Peña. And in this episode, we are so pleased to have with us a guest. I know I don't have a ton of guests that often.

We need to do it more. But with me today is Mike Nelson. He is a meteorologist. He's been a meteorologist for 19 years,

and he's relatively new to El Paso. Been here about a year and a half. The way that I know Mike is I actually helped him purchase a home.

So since that transaction just over a year or so ago, we've become friends, which has been a great thing for me. Being new to a city, a lot of times you don't have a ton of friends.

So meeting like-minded people is awesome. But what we're going to do today is we're going to talk a little bit about the weather in El Paso because I always blab about it, about how great it is here.

But I figured it might be a little more useful for folks if we actually had a true meteorologist on to kind of give us a little bit more of the details. So Mike, thank you for being here.

Happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Yeah, we're glad to have you. So we've been talking about doing this for a while,

so now we're making it happen. So let's go ahead, and we're going to jump right into it, basically. And so I've kind of told Mike, look,

we don't want to get super, super in deep, but having an understanding of how the geography, and we are in a desert climate, and how it all plays out is pretty important, especially if you're

thinking about moving here. So basically, how would you maybe describe the climate, the overall kind of climate picture in El Paso?

Sure, so El Paso has a transitional climate between what would be considered a hot, cold desert climate. That means we experience hot, dry summers, and kind of cool to mild, but dry winters.

We're considered high desert here, meaning we sit above 2,000 feet above sea level. Seasonal weather, I know we're going to talk a little bit about that, right?

So the windy season typically starts around March and runs into May. The reason we have that windy season during this time of the year is because we have high pressures that

sets up to our east. We get lows that come in off the Pacific, and they move into the Rocky Mountains, which increases the pressure gradient over our region.

You can kind of think of the pressure gradient as a river. When a river is nice and wide, it's calm, right? And as that river narrows, what happens? More rapids.

Rapids. The water picks up speed, right? The same thing is with the pressure gradient. The tighter that pressure gradient,

the more wind that has to try and get through that narrow space like a straw. That's when we start to see our highest winds. Then we transition.

Let me, let me, let me break in on that. Yeah, because, and hopefully we'll do some footage here because I have, and if you live in El Paso, you know, I do have some footage of me driving

in I think it was March-ish area. And yeah, since we are high desert, there's a lot of dust. There's a lot of dirt. And so once those winds start coming, like it gets nuts.

Yeah. We had a pretty intense dust storm this year. It kind of stopped traffic on I-10, I believe, for a little bit.

Visibility got down to near zero. So yeah, it is a big factor to think of. Absolutely. And the weather is still kind of like,

the weather is actually like temperature wise, it's nice during that time. Oh, it's very nice. Yeah, it's very nice.

Yeah. Very comfortable. For sure. Super comfortable.

But if that wind picks up, you know, it's going to be a little on the dirty side. You're going to be doing a lot of cleaning. Yes.

Yeah. Your house is going to be a little dustier than usual. Can't stop it. Yeah.

All right. So awesome. So that's kind of our windy season. What do we got next?

So then we transitioned to our dry, hot season, kind of what we were just in or kind of extended into. Really, this is from about May to end of mid July, typically before the monsoon season starts, right?

It was a little bit longer this year. We had a high pressure set up over the Southwest, what they call a heat dome, which kind of exacerbated conditions here

a little bit longer than they would have normally have. I think we went like a 37 or 38 day streak of triple digits here, which is not normal at all. Yeah.

So that was, that was pretty intense. And that just made when we would have transitioned into monsoon season, kind of mid July, end of July, it didn't really happen.

All that moisture stayed to the West and North of us kind of being shot Northeast around that high from the Pacific and Gulf of California. Yep.

So we missed a lot of that moisture that we'd normally get. But this week's a good example of kind of that transition into monsoon season. We're starting to see the thunderstorms in the area again,

even today. And then, yeah, we do jump into monsoon season, typically July, and that's going to last until about September.

For sure. And let me jump in on that too. So yeah, he's absolutely right. This was a hot July, but that was,

it was hot for like almost everywhere. Like it was nice. Yeah. It's not just here. Not just here.

Yes. But yeah, typically. And what would you say? I remember doing one of the first videos we did and I just looked at like old climate data

and basically the highs, because that's what people want to know. A lot of people think El Paso is maybe like Phoenix where it can get really, really high.

No, not at all. Yeah. Where do you think we, where would like a normal high in the summer, July find us?

You know, typically we only reach about 106 degrees, just not even a handful of times. This year was several days above 106. I think we had 112, not a record by the way,

114 is the record. So we didn't quite reach the record on that, but we did reach a number of consecutive days above triple digits.

So yeah, typically those little short 106s and then we jumped back down to about upper 90s, lower 100s. Yeah, absolutely.

And like we always say, it's a dry heat. It's not that humid heat. Yeah. It is more bearable. Right. For sure.

For sure. All right. So that, you know, kind of takes us through kind of the hot summer season.

It does. Then monsoon season. Then monsoon season, yep. So then the typical pattern sets up

where that high pressure that was sitting over the Southwest transitions to the East. Those lows again, come back in off the Pacific, hit the Rocky Mountains.

Those low pressure systems, because they're cyclonic, they spin counterclockwise. Okay. That draws moisture off the Pacific

and the Gulf of California transports it Northeast and the Southwest United States, excuse me. That high pressure system, which is anti-cyclonic, it spins clockwise.

That's going to transport moisture off of the Gulf of Mexico transport it Northwest into the desert Southwest. So you get the convergence of both the moisture from the Southwest and Southeast

converging into our location. So that really supplies the moisture, the ingredient that we need for those thunderstorms. Cause we've already got the heat.

We've got the instability and then we have the moisture. We get a lot of lift from a lot of different ways. We get that from convective, so heating, plenty of heat here.

We're also going to get it from convergence, the convergence of those winds coming off from around the high and low pressure systems converging over our area that provides lift.

And then we also get what's called orographic lift. And that's just as it sounds, it's from large terrain features, in this case mountains here.

So you get several ways. That's why you see a lot of the thunderstorms blowing up over the mountains. They'll kind of dissipate as they move past the mountains.

Gotcha. Yep. Okay. So that's kind of monsoon season, August, September, October-ish.

Yep. That's correct. And I've said this a million times, but we're talking monsoon. It's kind of a dramatic word,

but people have to keep in mind, you know, 10 inches of rain is our average, I think, a year or less. And so yeah, the monsoon season,

I love monsoon season just because like in a desert, it's so nice actually to get some water. It's great. And the cloud cover.

Cloud cover. Cloud cover does, it's surprising how much cooler it gets once the monsoon season starts,

especially that transition from being so hot. That cloud cover really does help cool down the temperatures here. It makes it very nice, especially at night.

Definitely. Yeah. And now this, this is just, I just kind of thought about this, but I've always been curious.

I think neither one of us were here during this time, but I think in 2006, there was a massive flood here. Like there's pictures of like people in canoes

on the street. Oh yeah. How does something like that happen? So I believe 06 was El Nino year as well.

We didn't quite see it for this one, unfortunately. It's just the pattern set up perfectly. That kind of convergent boundary where all that moisture converges

between those two systems, probably aligned right over the top of us. And we just saw kind of a train of thunderstorms happening then.

Just large, very large scale type thunderstorms. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. So yeah, that was a unique event as well.

So, all right. So that takes us through September, October, kind of getting into fall. What do we see after that?

So really not a whole lot in the fall, surprisingly. From about September into November, not a whole lot of significant weather events. It's starts to cool down.

It starts to feel really nice here. You get that fall feeling, which is really nice. So not a whole lot going on then. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. That's when it's really nice, quite honestly. It is. Okay. Well, anything in store,

how does our December, January, February look? That's going to be a great question. That's going to kind of play into what we're going to talk about here very soon.

So winter is typically from about November to February. Okay. We do get occasional snowfall. We still get a little bit more rain

that time of year as well. Hopefully no freezing precipitation type events, no freezing rain or freezing drizzle events. That would be nice

because the roads do get pretty crazy here. And I know they do have snow removal here in the city of El Paso. Okay. I didn't know that actually.

Yeah, I believe they're divided into like 65 zones. I'm not quite sure how many trucks they have, but they do have a fleet apparently is what I'm told. So this year is going to be interesting.

We're going to talk a little bit about it with it being an El Nino year and why that happens. But it's going to be interesting to see what kind of weather events we get

because we are going to be more moist and more cool, which could be interesting for some uniques and significant snow events for this winter. Okay. Wow, that would be nuts.

I haven't been here for any of those either. So yeah, we were going to talk about, cause I do see this on the news. What I, my lame understanding of it is that, you know,

we're either, it's either El Nino or La Nina. Right. Seems like we've been in El Nino and maybe that's some of the reason why

we had the whole heat dome event or I don't know anything. So how's that going to play for us? A little bit about El Nino. Really what it is, is it's a warming of the waters

in the Southern Pacific along the equator. Typically the trade winds keep that warm water in the Western Pacific, but in an El Nino year, those trade winds, those easterlies weaken

pretty substantially, sometimes even reverse. What that allows to happen is that warm water that's typically stuck in the West is transported eastwards to the West coast of the Americas.

That allows the jet stream to kind of pull a little bit farther South and transport moisture across the desert Southwest, Texas and into the Gulf coast States.

This usually peaks around November into February when our winter happens. Okay. Because we are going to be wetter

and also a little bit cooler. That's why I say we really need to watch out for the possibility of some significant winter events this winter.

So basically, I'm assuming that means basically maybe some actual real snowfall. Yeah, it is a good chance. It really depends on how strong this El Nino gets.

Right now it's not too strong, but they are projecting that it will be a moderate to strong El Nino year. And if that happens, then yes, we absolutely need to be prepared for that.

Wow, well, that'll be interesting. I can already hear people from El Paso talking because I have been here a couple of times where we just got just the lightest bit of snow

and it was a bit of a mess as far as people driving. And I mean, if you've never driven in snow, how do you know how to drive in snow? And I would say probably most people here haven't.

And so, yeah, that'll make things interesting. And El Paso doesn't have a great reputation for being great drivers to start with. Yeah, no comment on that one.

Yeah, snow. Okay, well, that's gonna be, I guess we'll see how that all plays out. Yeah, I guess play this back after winter time

and let me know if I'm right or wrong. Yeah, for sure. That'll make for great footage though if we get snow in El Paso.

Okay, so one last topic that we wanna come up with here and talk a little bit about, because like I said, I am a real estate agent. This YouTube channel promotes El Paso.

It's a great place to live, which I believe it is. However, if climate change continues to impact our weather, then I'm gonna feel bad if I told everybody, hey, move to El Paso, it's great.

And then all of a sudden, the whole thing falls apart. So any thoughts on how climate change might affect us? Yeah, so that's a pretty loaded question, I guess. Yeah, there's a lot that goes into that.

If you look at current trends, we are in a warming trend, right? They're projecting anywhere from three to six degrees of warming over about 100 years.

And I think with that, I think in general, what we can expect is to have probably an increased frequency in heat waves, more intense, lasting longer.

I think that's more for kind of the desert Southwest in general. I think probably a slight temperature increase, but that also brings a lot of other issues with it, right?

We gotta start thinking about infrastructure, agriculture, the heat stresses that it puts on people, heat stroke type related issues, heating, cooling type stuff,

as far as infrastructure, like I said, goes. And then of course, the big one is water resources. And we have actually two pretty big aquifers here, the Waco and the Mesilla Bolsons,

and they're pretty large. I think we're pretty safe here in El Paso when it comes to water resources. But when you're talking about things

like the Colorado River, which supplies a lot of the water to a lot of the Southwest states, it's gonna be a topic

that's gonna be brought up a lot more. So I'd say for here in El Paso, it's fine. We have the benefit of being high desert too. So it does stay a little bit cooler.

Yeah, good. Yeah, I think that's good common sense kind of thinking because yeah, obviously, it does seem like things are getting hotter.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, I think that's great. So I think we're gonna leave it right there. But I would be amiss

if I didn't take an opportunity to ask you as somebody who has recently moved to El Paso, just kind of what your impressions are, what are your thoughts?

How's El Paso treating you guys? So we actually love El Paso, I'm not gonna lie. I also came from North Dakota. So I went from the Canadian border

down to the Mexican border. So I went from negative 65 degree winters to this. So this is fantastic. From a small town to what I consider a bigger town.

The food is fantastic. The people are so amazingly nice. And we have never said a bad thing about this place. Within four hours, you have a lot available to you.

If you like the outdoors, there's plenty available to you. Like I mentioned, there's great restaurants, probably some great nightlife as well. And downtown looks phenomenal.

I hope they keep refurbishing that and continue on those projects because it is very well maintained. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, it's a clean city. It is. And the people are nice. Like we all say that, but it's true.

It is, absolutely, 100%. Okay. All right, well, we're gonna wrap it up there. Mike, thank you so much for joining us.

And there's, I think, a much more kind of experienced person giving us what the weather's like instead of just a real estate agent being like, hey, it's great, trust me.

So with that, we'll leave you guys and we'll see you in the next episode.