While overall this has still been a fairly slow severe weather season here in Central Texas, we did have a few strong storms in May. Most notably was on May 20, when a tornado formed just north of us in Midlothian. Storms in Central Texas produced strong winds and large hail, with baseball size hail reported just north of Waco. You can see some pictures here.

While we saw an abundance of rain to start off the year, in May we were certainly left out to dry. In a normal May we see around 4.46”, and we saw a measly 0.89” this year, which put us 3.57” below normal. This makes May of 2010 the 10^th driest May on record for Waco.

The lack of rain did not help our temperatures either. With little rain or clouds to help keep our temperatures cool, our average high temperature for May 2010 was the 6^Th warmest, at 89.3°.

Although our reservoirs are quite full as summer begins, we could use some rain this month, if for nothing else but to help cool us off. Long-range models have now retracted from last month’s outlook of a “cooler than normal and wetter than normal summer.” Now it looks like we will have normal temperatures this summer with normal amounts of precipitation. For Central Texas that means, hot and humid with little rain. Medium range models have the month of June being significantly warmer than normal, with normal amounts of precipitation. To try to put a positive spin on all this… At least we aren’t going into the summer with a significant drought like we were last year!