As September comes to a close, all eyes turn to October and with it, hope for our first \u201creal cold front.\u201d <\/p>\n
By that, I mean a front strong enough to keep daytime highs in the 70s for at least three days in a row. That kind of front almost always arrives in October, though there are exceptions. For example, in 2020, it showed up early, on September 20. <\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a look back at when the first real cold front arrived over the past five years.<\/p>\n
The first cold front going back to 2020 (Copyright 2025 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n
Last year really stood out; our first real cold front didn\u2019t arrive until mid-November. Because we missed a strong October front, October 2024 ended up as the third-warmest October on record.<\/p>\n
I get emails from viewers saying, \u201cIf it doesn\u2019t get cold, you can\u2019t call it a cold front.\u201d If we are being meteorologically accurate, a cold front is simply an advancing surface air mass that changes the wind direction and drops temperatures. That drop might be only a few degrees, but if the air mass changes, a cold front has passed. That\u2019s why, sometimes on TV, I\u2019ll say \u201ccool front,\u201d it\u2019s just a conversational way to match what people expect.<\/p>\n
We actually had two cold fronts move through Houston in September. Can you spot them below? I drew arrows to help. <\/p>\n
Do you count these as cold fronts? (Copyright 2025 by KPRC Click2Houston – All rights reserved.)<\/p>\n
They\u2019re harder to see when you only look at daytime highs, but they jump out in the morning lows. Cold fronts push out humid air and replace it with drier air from the north; dry air cools off faster at night, which is why those morning lows drop into the 60s.<\/p>\n
Ready to play?<\/b><\/p>\n
I\u2019ll go first. Now, there isn\u2019t any official science behind this because we\u2019re defining a \u201creal cold front\u201d as three straight days with highs in the 70s. But I would guess that our first one will arrive on Wednesday morning, October 22.<\/b> That would give us highs in the 70s on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th.<\/p>\n