{"id":448256,"date":"2026-09-26T07:28:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T07:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/448256\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T07:28:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T07:28:14","slug":"fall-in-san-antonio-has-become-nearly-4-degrees-warmer-since-1970","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/448256\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall in San Antonio has become nearly 4 degrees warmer since 1970"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Meteorologist Shel Winkley of Climate Central said San Antonio now averages 21 more days<\/a> of above-average temperatures than it did just a few decades ago.<\/p>\n

Average daytime highs typically drop from the low 90s to the low 70s during meteorological fall, which includes the months of September, October, and November. Unfortunately, temperatures are not cooling as quickly or staying as cool as they once did.<\/p>\n

Climate Central found that San Antonio\u2019s average fall temperature has increased by 3.8 degrees<\/a> since 1970.<\/p>\n

\u201cThree-point-eight degrees may not sound like a lot,\u201d Winkley said. \u201cLike a 4-degree temperature swing from Monday to Tuesday isn\u2019t that big of a difference. But when you\u2019re looking at this long-term trend, that\u2019s essentially like your body temperature going up 4 degrees. You would be in the hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warmer temperatures can have a much larger impact than causing changes to your wardrobe. A longer stretch of heat can extend mosquito activity<\/a> and make allergy seasons<\/a> last further into October and November, Winkley said.<\/p>\n

Warmer weather can also mean higher utility bills as residents keep their air conditioners running longer into the fall season. <\/p>\n

Your travel plans to see fall foliage can also be affected.<\/p>\n

Overnight temperatures have warmed the most compared with historical averages. Cooler nighttime temperatures help signal trees to prepare for winter, so the added warmth can affect the timing of fall foliage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

South Texas typically sees fall colors later in the season, but across other parts of the country, warmer fall temperatures are delaying the arrival of those fall colors. <\/p>\n

How climate scientists measure changes to our climate<\/p>\n

The development of attribution science<\/a> examines how human-caused emissions affect the likelihood and frequency of extreme weather.<\/p>\n

Climate scientists run more than 20 models using historical emissions, including the heat-trapping pollution released by humans. They then run the models again after removing the human contribution to compare current conditions with what would be expected from natural weather variability alone.<\/p>\n

That comparison produces a ratio showing how much more likely an event is because of climate change. The scale generally ranges from zero to five. A rating of four means a temperature event would have been rare without climate change, while a rating of five means it would have been nearly impossible without the influence of human-caused emissions.<\/p>\n

That does not mean climate change caused every degree of heat, Winkley said. Instead, it makes unusually warm temperatures more likely and causes them to happen more often.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo as long as we can all understand that this is not the same kind of fall weather that we\u2019ve experienced and there\u2019s something that we can do about it, then we can call it whatever we need to,\u201d Winkley said.<\/p>\n

Whether you choose to call it climate change or not, fall temperatures are trending warmer as a result of heat-trapping emissions<\/a> building up in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Daily Forecast\"\"<\/p>\n

KSAT meteorologists keep you on top of the ever-changing South Texas weather.<\/p>\n

QUICK WEATHER LINKS<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 by KSAT – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Meteorologist Shel Winkley of Climate Central said San Antonio now averages 21 more days of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1768,372,82,84,83,172],"class_list":["post-448256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-climate","tag-fall","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448256","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=448256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}