The dropdown menu provides options for tracking precipitation<\/a>\u00a0across the state. If you toggle to Houston Intercontinental Airport, you\u2019ll notice that Houston averages more than 50 inches of rain every year. But if you take a look at Midland, average rainfall is generally less than 15 inches.<\/p>\n Precipitation since October for select Texas stations<\/p>\n Tap or click the map for more details on each area. All years apart from the 30-year average are water years, which run from Oct. 1 of the previous year through Sept. 30.<\/p>\n Austin-Camp Mabry’s annual precipitation (inches)<\/p>\n Light blue bars indicate years missing a week or more of data.<\/p>\n Austin-Camp Mabry’s cumulative precipitation (inches)<\/p>\n Source: Applied Climate Information System \/ NOAA<\/p>\n These charts provide additional context for rainfall that has fallen over the course of this water year. The column chart on the upper right shows the ups and downs of annual precipitation over each location\u2019s period of record. The dark blue line indicates a sliding 5-year average.<\/p>\n The past few years have brought one of Austin\u2019s worst multi-year droughts on record. Central Texas has been in a persistent long-term drought since late 2021, and Austin is currently running a rainfall deficit from normal of about 34 inches \u2014 nearly an entire average year\u2019s worth of rain \u2014 since the drought began.<\/p>\n Fortunately, the Lower Colorado River Authority\u2019s Highland Lakes, which supply Austin\u2019s drinking water, have partially recovered from low levels, thanks to the July 2025 rain event in the Hill Country. As of April 2026, Lake Buchanan is about 94% full, while Lake Travis is around 74% full, for a combined storage of approximately 83%.<\/p>\n However, the Edwards Aquifer \u2014 San Antonio\u2019s primary source of drinking water \u2014 still needs significant rainfall in its recharge zone, which includes parts of Austin and the Hill Country. In previous years, summer declines in the aquifer were typically offset by increases in the fall and early winter. In 2025, however, limited rainfall led to a continued drop, and by 2026, aquifer levels had fallen to about 35 feet below the historical average of 660 feet.<\/p>\n Rainfall trends in Austin over the past several decades show a clear cyclical pattern. This seesawing nature of precipitation<\/a>\u00a0is evident when looking at five-year averages. Based on that pattern, it\u2019s reasonable to expect rainfall totals to trend upward again over the next several years.<\/p>\n However, there are still uncertainties about how climate change could permanently alter rainfall patterns in Central Texas.<\/p>\n This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> <\/p>\n CreditsReporting by Mary Wasson. Editing by Roberto Villalpando, Caroline Ghisolfi and Danielle Rindler\/Hearst DevHub. Design and development by Janie Haseman\/Hearst DevHub. Production by Alice Bazerghi. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chart above illustrates precipitation recorded in cities across Texas over water years, tracked from Oct. 1 through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":{"0":"post-243663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"logo\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/statesman-square-black.png\"\/)
Get your morning forecast from newsroom meteorologist Mary Wasson.<\/p>\n