No one who hasn’t taken leave of their senses could truthfully claim summer has finally appeared in Texas.  At least not North Texas.

We remain five to ten degrees below normal, if not more.  Tropical humidity continues unabated.  Sometimes spotty and sometimes widespread, rain and thunderstorms continue pummeling us.

For example, it’s presently 86°F (30°C) with a dewpoint of 71°F (22°C).  That equates to 61% relative humidity.

And thunderstorms are now developing around the area.

The high pressure system that normally dominates our summers has yet to form.  I now believe it’s too late for it make an appearance.  Even if it did, we’re now passing into summer’s end and what always has been the hottest part of the year, so any such weather system would be late to the game and crippled by our downhill slide toward autumn.

Flash floods in July?  That’s hardly Texan.  An inbound flow from the Gulf being drawn up by a vacuum created by high pressure to the east and west?  Again, not our common fare.  Yes, it’s generally humid here around this time… just not this humid.

And that brings me to a troubling premise for this year’s hurricane season. . .

North Texas is well beyond the due date for a hurricane strike.

Hurricanes in North Texas?  Yes, it does happen, and in fact it happens regularly—on a scale of time familiar to Earth and alien to humans, one measured in decades and centuries rather than minutes and seconds.

The weather pattern now controlling our days and nights offers the perfect setup for drawing just such a tropical storm north from the Gulf of Mexico.

You see, our familiar high pressure friend, the one who visits every summer and spans the distance from Oklahoma to the Gulf, and from Louisiana to New Mexico, tends to steer major storms around Texas.  Only the most potent of invaders can penetrate this shield.  Those who do tend to find themselves suffocated by a powerful force that crushes invaders beneath its heavy hand.

But not this year.  This year, instead, we have a vacuous space drawing weather up from the Gulf, pulling it up through a massive meteorological vacuum that continues pulling tremendous amounts of moisture and instability up from the south and directly over us.  Any tropical system that ventured too close to the mouth of this black hole would find itself yanked northward with tremendous force and at tremendous speeds.

Again, we are well behind schedule for a direct hit by such a storm.  The interesting thing is that we’re now setup with no defenses or obstacles to stop one should it head in this direction.  On the contrary, we’re now in a position to welcome one without interference.

This brings us to another part of the puzzle that causes concern.

It goes without saying that we have received more than our annual share of rain already, and it’s only July.  So much rain fell in the last three months that the ground remains super-saturated.  No part of Earth’s cover in this region has gone without heavy downpours for more than three or four days.

Add to that the excessive humidity.  You see, with the air remaining heavy with moisture, evaporation is taking much longer to dry things out.  One need only feel the heavy morning dew each day to realize this.

Because so much water remains trapped just below the surface with nowhere to go, and because the air keeps everything moist, a quick downpour easily brings flash flooding and extensions to existing flood problems with the various rivers and lakes in the area.

Now consider what a tropical system might do with these circumstances. . .

I’m in no way predicting such a thing will happen this year.  Or even next year.  It’s just that we’re already past due and are hosting precarious conditions that would support a major problem should anything happen along these lines.

And so we wait… and watch… and wonder.