We have a winner in the Houston cold front challenge

We have a winner!

Back on Sept. 30, I asked when Houston would finally get its first real cold front, you know, one that brings highs in the 60s or 70s for at least three days in a row. (If you missed the original post, you can check it out here.)

Well, the results are in and congratulations go to Larry Wilkins! Larry nailed it with his guess of Oct. 28, and sure enough, our first real front is set to roll in within hours. That means Oct. 29, 30, and 31 will all have highs below 80°.

Coming in second was Kory Cochran, who guessed Oct. 29, just a few hours off. I had picked Oct. 22, so I missed it by nearly a week. Amy McIntee went bold with an early guess of Oct. 12 (we squeezed in five more 90°+ days after that one), and Joseph Smith said February 20. Yikes! We’ll probably have a few days below freezing by then!

Most of you guessed around Halloween, and that turned out to be spot-on.

Of course, this was all in good fun. Once you get beyond 7 days, weather models start to lose reliability. There may come a day when forecasts 10 to 14 are solid, but today isn’t that day. Until then, climate trends make a good backup plan.

In fact, I shared the graphic below showing the dates of the first real cold front from the past five years. It got me thinking: a great science fair project for an elementary school student would be to dig into the records, which go all the way back to 1877, and see what the average first date is. They could also explore how a warmer world has changed the average first date over the past 40 years. I don’t know the answer, but I’d love to see what it is.

Here’s another fun fact: since 1964, Houston has always had at least one morning below 54°. We’ve got two of those coming up on Thursday and Friday.

Now the final suspense, will October 2025 finish as the warmest October on record for Houston? Before this front, we were sitting in first place. We’ll see where we land once those three “cold” days wrap up!