Yesterday, we posed this question:
QUESTION OF THE DAY
Why does Houston receive about six inches of rain less than Birmingham each year even though they are much, much closer to our dear friend, the Gulf of Mexico? (Houston 48 inches, Birmingham 54 inches)
Thanks to Matt Marshall, Matt Padget, Bill in Vigo and Brutus for some good answers. I learned early on that we have a lot of very weatherwise people who read this blog.
First, look at these average annual rain amounts:
Houston 48 inches
Birmingham 54 inches
Corpus Christi about 33 inches
Brownsville, Tex., less than 30 inches
Corpus Christi, Brownsville and Victoria, Tex., are only a few miles inland from the Gulf. But they are over on the west side of the Gulf. Low pressure areas that form over the Gulf often do not have time to get really cranked up until they get more to the east and have time to gather bunches of moisture.
Suppose a low develops over the West Gulf near the mouth of the Rio Grande. This means that the wind would be out of the north early on in Brownsville and Corpus, pulling in drier air.
As some of the replies suggested, Birmingham is closer to storm tracks that move across the central part of the country and benefits rainwise from those, especially when a cold front is involved. Lots of times a low developing east of the Southern Rocky Mountains will move east across Oklahoma, Arkansas and Kentucky giving it plenty of time to ingest moisture from the Gulf. Often, a cold front pulled southward on the west side of the low will enhance the rain for Birmingham.
