Austin Weather History: Hottest, Coldest, Rainiest St. Patrick’s Days
AUSTIN (KXAN) – What kind of weather does Austin typically have on St. Patrick’s Day?
A high of 74, a low of 52 and about 0.09″ of rain. But what about extremes?
The National Weather Service has weather data for Austin dating back to the 1890s.
KXAN dug through the archives to find the hottest, coldest, and wettest St. Patrick’s Days in history.
Austin never hit 90 on March 17, but we came close. Camp Mabry, Austin’s official weather forecasting site, reached 89° on St. Patrick’s Day in 1972, making it the hottest on record in history.
Several other years have seen peaks in the mid-1980s, most recently in 2018.
On the other hand, eight St. Patrick’s Day in Austin failed to reach 60°. The coldest March 17 in history was in 2000, with the maximum temperature reaching just 51C at Camp Mabry, well below the average of 74C.
And what about low temperatures? Austin has gone down to freezing weather on St. Patrick’s Day only once in history. Camp Mabry bottomed out at 30° in 1913.
The remainder of the coldest first 10 St. Patrick’s Days all saw temperatures at or below 38°, well below the average low of 52°.
March is right in the middle of the pack when it comes to wettest versus driest months, ranking as the sixth wettest month of the year. In a typical March, Austin gets about 2.88″ of rain, which means that every day, including St. Patrick’s Day, sees about 0.09″.
Several days have seen much more than the average. In both 1941 and 1988, nearly 2 inches of rain were recorded on St. Patrick’s Day at Camp Mabry. Two more years – 1905 and 1992 – saw more than an inch.
More from our Austin Weather History Series:
Click here to view the latest forecast from the First Warning Weather team.
