Hello Houston – The Commuter Cut (October 6, 2026)

Josh, that's a stark number, 93%.

What does that mean in real terms for growing conditions, for just the vibrancy of nature around us? What does 93% of the state being in at least some drought look like?

Well, I mean, at the end of the day, this is Texas, and so summers tend to be pretty hot and dry, so it's not uncommon for there to be a significant amount of moisture stress at, you know, August, beginning of September timeframe.

What we saw this year that's a little unusual is that we haven't had the relief that September usually provides.

A lot of our rainfall tends to happen during that period of time when we start to have tropical systems come on from the Gulf.

And we haven't had that.

And I live in Corpus Christi, so I don't want a hurricane either, but We do need that rainfall to help us replenish the soil profile as we go into the fall, winter, and then, you know, next spring at planting time, we'll be using some of that soil moisture.

So we could use a lot of relief at this point in the year.

We got some last week and over the weekend, which will help, but we're still behind in many respects in terms of soil moisture.

Josh, can you talk about how droughts can sometimes actually make the flooding worse? Because the longer the soil is dry, I mean, actually, I'll let you explain

that.

Yeah, that is a thing.

You know, if you come out of a prolonged drought, we expect not a lot of vegetation to be out there, right? And one of the things that causes issue during severe rainfall events is the overland flow, right, the runoff.

When you have a lot of good vegetation standing out there, and most of Texas is naturally a grassland, that slows the runoff water.

It allows it time to actually infiltrate into the soil profile.

So when you have bare pastures, bare fields out there, that runoff water moves really fast, and that contributes to a lot of the flooding issues.

Yesterday, I was looking at the pictures of Texas from space where they did like a July to August kind of comparison where it was green.

We had actually some flooding in some areas, but then just really, really barren.

And I think most Texans would say, well, hey, it's always hot in August.

It's always hot.

What else? I know you had mentioned one thing that sticks out, but what else is an outlier in this season?

Well, where I sit, I work with row crops primarily, and primarily in South Texas.

It's not just that we've had this bad recent stretch of heat and drought, it's that we've been under multi-year drought.

And here in the Corpus Christi area, I can track that back to 2022.

We've had actually four, four and a half years of year-on-year drought.

Josh, that's a stark number, 93%.

What does that mean in real terms for growing conditions, for just the vibrancy of nature around us? What does 93% of the state being in at least some drought look like?

Well, I mean, at the end of the day, this is Texas, and so summers tend to be pretty hot and dry, so it's not uncommon for there to be a significant amount of moisture stress at, you know, August, beginning of September timeframe.

What we saw this year that's a little unusual is that we haven't had the relief that September usually provides.

A lot of our rainfall tends to happen during that period of time when we start to have tropical systems come on from the Gulf.

And we haven't had that.

And I live in Corpus Christi, so I don't want a hurricane either, but We do need that rainfall to help us replenish the soil profile as we go into the fall, winter, and then, you know, next spring at planting time, we'll be using some of that soil moisture.

So we could use a lot of relief at this point in the year.

We got some last week and over the weekend, which will help, but we're still behind in many respects in terms of soil moisture.

Josh, can you talk about how droughts can sometimes actually make the flooding worse? Because the longer the soil is dry, I mean, actually, I'll let you explain

that.

Yeah, that is a thing.

You know, if you come out of a prolonged drought, we expect not a lot of vegetation to be out there, right? And one of the things that causes issue during severe rainfall events is the overland flow, right, the runoff.

When you have a lot of good vegetation standing out there, and most of Texas is naturally a grassland, that slows the runoff water.

It allows it time to actually infiltrate into the soil profile.

So when you have bare pastures, bare fields out there, that runoff water moves really fast, and that contributes to a lot of the flooding issues.

Yesterday, I was looking at the pictures of Texas from space where they did like a July to August kind of comparison where it was green.

We had actually some flooding in some areas, but then just really, really barren.

And I think most Texans would say, well, hey, it's always hot in August.

It's always hot.

What else? I know you had mentioned one thing that sticks out, but what else is an outlier in this season?

Well, where I sit, I work with row crops primarily, and primarily in South Texas.

It's not just that we've had this bad recent stretch of heat and drought, it's that we've been under multi-year drought.

And here in the Corpus Christi area, I can track that back to 2022.

We've had actually four, four and a half years of year-on-year drought.