Texas seems out of hurricane danger early

The Texas hurricane season is over.

It seems preposterous, really, to write that. After all, the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season just reached its historical peak intensity last week, and the season officially lasts until Nov. 30.

And yet all of the available evidence suggests Texas is very, very unlikely to get struck by a hurricane during the remaining two and a half months of the Atlantic season.

None of the reliable hurricane models are forecasting a tropical threat to Texas in the next 10 days.

After Sept. 24, during a given year the historical odds of Texas getting hit by a hurricane are 1-in-50 — meaning it's happened three times in the last 150 years.

On top of that, the region already has experienced one cold front this month and will get another today. A third is likely for this weekend.

Sometimes, a cool front will push off the coast into the Gulf of Mexico and this low- pressure system will roar back ashore as a tropical storm or hurricane. This is how Alicia formed in mid-August 1983.

But once Houston begins to receive regular fronts this typically does not happen, as any tropical activity that gets into the Gulf is picked up by frontal systems and moved east-northeast. Bill Read, former director of the National Hurricane Center who lives in League City, says he doesn't start feeling comfortable until Texas has had about three good fronts.

Perhaps most significantly this year is the position of the jet stream, a powerful flow of winds in the upper level of the atmosphere.

In a pattern more characteristic of October than September, the jet stream is digging down into the Gulf, producing strong westerly winds of 60 mph to 80 mph from Texas to Florida in the upper atmosphere.

This contrasts strongly with surface winds, and this contrast, known as wind shear, rips hurricanes apart.

“I've been looking at the upper-level wind flow across the Gulf and it reminds me of late September or early October,” said Chris Hebert, a hurricane forecaster with ImpactWeather, based in Houston. “As there are no indications of any of any change through the end of the month, I think we can safely say that hurricane season for Texas, and possibly the northern Gulf Coast, is over.”

eric.berger@chron.com