By Brandon C. Williams
Managing Editor, The Post Newspaper
Fans of mild, dry winters will have to wait.
The area will endure hard freezes on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings before a brief warming spell is interrupted by a forecast of rain entering next week. The pattern is part of what could be a new reality.
“The weather impact we should be more concerned about when it comes to our changing winters is not just the cold, but more prevalent severe weather,” said KTRK (ABC13) Meteorologist Elyse Smith, who, along with the rest of her Houston weather teammates, have spent long hours breaking down the weather before the current blast from the Arctic arrived on Sunday.
“More often than not, Southeast Texas will be on the warmer side of these strong winter storms that develop in the Panhandle and send snow to the northern half of the country,” said Smith, who came to Houston last May after spending three years with the NBC affiliate in Buffalo. “That means the type of fronts that could pass through Houston could bring strong to severe storms just like we saw last week.”
A native of Chicago, Smith arrived in Houston just in time to experience the area’s hottest summer to date. While the weather can get warm in Chicago during the summer, nothing could prepare her for what she both worked on both in and out of the studio.
“I knew that the first big adjustment was going to be a hot summer, not even us meteorologists could have predicted how extreme this past summer was going to be at the time,” she said.
“I’ll be honest, this past summer was ROUGH,” Smith added.
While there is still plenty of time left in the winter, Smith, who has earned a National Murrow Award for her coverage of the Buffalo Winter Blizzard of 2022 along with receiving the 2022 Best Weathercast Award from the New York State Broadcasters Association, is optimistic the area has seen Mother Nature’s coldest this season.
“I do think we could see a few cooler days this winter,” she said, “maybe more than previous years of late. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be Arctic each time or it’s because of the Polar Vortex.”
When she’s not tracking down cold fronts and heat waves, Smith is continuing to discover what the Houston area has to offer. The “big football gal,” as she calls herself, had the chance to watch the Texans playoff win over the Browns last Saturday in flight while returning from visiting family and friends in Chicago.
“I love the diversity this area of the country has,” she said. “From geography to culture, places to see and food to eat, Houston has it all. I can’t wait to see what future adventure comes my way, the stories I get to tell and storms I get to weather with you all!
