Central Texas weather is about to pull off a classic weekend flip-flop. Austin temperatures will surge above normal on Saturday and to near-record levels by Sunday, before a strong cold front sweeps through and brings our last chill of traditional winter on Monday.
Austin, TX
Weather whiplash from cold front ahead for Austin: 5 graphics tell the story
Zara Graciliano of Guadalajara, Mexico, poses for a photo at the Congress Avenue Block Party during the South by Southwest Conference and Festivals in Austin on Thursday. The event space on Congress Avenue is open throughout SXSW and is free and open to the public this year.
So, get ready to break out the sunscreen and wide-brimmed hats, because the weekend will feature plenty of sunshine, breezy southerly winds and temperatures climbing well into the 80s and 90s on both Saturday and Sunday.
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Here are four maps and one chart that will tell the weather story this weekend.
The green colors indicate higher dew point temperatures and increased humidity across Texas vs. the brown and sandy colors, which highlight the dry line and drier air out west. Also, the lines show the wind direction coming from the south.
1. Humidity builds along, east of I-35
A system of high atmospheric pressure has now shifted east of Texas, allowing southerly winds to pump more moisture-rich air into Central Texas. This will bring dew point temperatures (an indicator of water vapor saturation in the air) up from the 40s on Friday to near 60 degrees on Saturday. Expect plenty of sunshine, gusty south winds and temperatures warming into the lower to mid-80s.
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A strong cold front will move into Texas as early as Sunday morning with blustery and colder temperatures behind it.
2. Cold front surges into Texas
A blustery, cold, and dry cold front will move across the Lone Star State on Sunday — first through the Panhandle during the morning, then into North-Central Texas around midday, before pushing into Central Texas during the late afternoon and reaching South Texas by Sunday evening.
Before the cold front Sunday, Texas temperatures will climb to the warmest we’ve felt so far this year, and then a blast of colder air will arrive.
3. Temperatures drop by double digits
Ahead of the front, afternoon temperatures Sunday will skyrocket into the 90s, thanks to compressional heating, which occurs when a parcel of air sinks, compresses and warms. This sometimes happens when southwesterly winds blow over the Hill Country and drop in elevation as the air moves into Austin.
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If that happens, we could see Sunday temperatures that would rival daily heat records for March 15 at both Camp Mabry and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Austin’s main climate observation sites. Camp Mabry’s record high is 91 degrees, set in 2016, while the airport’s record is 87 degrees, set in 1977. If those temperatures are reached, it would mark the hottest day so far this year, a degree or two warmer than the current high of 89 degrees recorded on March 3.
Behind the front, blustery north winds will send temperatures tumbling nearly 50 degrees from Sunday afternoon to early Monday morning. While we don’t expect freezing temperatures in Austin, don’t put away your winter jackets just yet.
Classic Texas weather ahead: warm Saturday, near-record heat Sunday, then a strong cold front barrels in to bring one last blast of winter chill to Central Texas by Monday. 🌡️➡️🧥 pic.twitter.com/sfKgjzAPoL
— Mary Wasson (@Mary_Wasson) March 13, 2026
“Monday morning has the potential for some locations to see freezing temperatures, with the National Blend Model (a composite weather forecast model) currently giving about a 20% to 40% chance for temperatures less than 32 degrees over our typically colder locations of the southern Edwards Plateau and Hill Country,” the meteorologists at the National Weather Service wrote in their forecast discussion earlier in the week.
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North winds will blow across South and Central Texas behind the front Sunday evening and will gust between 35 and 50 mph.
4. Gusts behind a wall of wind
As the cold front moves into Central Texas, a wall of wind will arrive with it. The gusts could prompt the weather service to issue a wind advisory, with one forecast model showing gusts as strong as 50 mph with the initial surge.
The National Weather Service issues a wind advisory when sustained winds of 31 to 39 mph are expected for at least an hour, or any gusting winds reach 46 to 57 mph.
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5. The week ahead
Gusty north winds will continue into Monday morning, bringing wind chill values, or “feels like” temperatures, down into the 20s across the Hill Country and keeping afternoon temperatures in the upper 50s.
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Next week, we will see a gradual warming trend and a strong ridge of high atmospheric pressure over the western United States will slowly build east with temperatures a little warmer each day.
Michael Dorman
Austin, Texas, is revving up to sell $2.35 billion of debt for a convention center and a wastewater treatment plant, while a legal battle continues over bonds to help finance a light rail system.
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The bond boom comes as the city council voted on Thursday to pursue the development of a $390 million baseline general obligation bond package for the November ballot despite a call by Mayor Kirk Watson to wait until 2028.
“I believe we can and we should bring forward significant investments in the future,” he said. “In fact, if we restore compliance with our financial policies and we maintain the discipline we actually will have greater future capacity to do more for this community in 2028.”
A bond election would
The city, which last held a successful GO bond election in 2022 for $350 million of debt for affordable housing, had $1.03 billion of unissued voter-approved GO bond authorization as of the Sept. 30 end of fiscal 2025. Last year,
On Thursday, the city council signed off on a $34.5 million wrongful prosecution and conviction settlement with four individuals to be financed through the sale of non-voter-approved GO bonds.
The council approved up to $1.35 billion of special tax revenue bonds on May 21 for a $1.6 billion project to replace the city’s now-demolished convention center with a facility that will increase rentable event space to 620,000 square feet from 365,000 square feet.
Rich Saskal
The bonds are backed with revenue from certain city hotel occupancy taxes and incremental state tax revenue generated within a project finance zone the city established in 2024. Amounts and timings for issuing the debt are being determined, according to the city, which filed a petition with a Travis County District Court for an expedited validation of the bonds.
An ordinance approved in October
The city also plans to refund hotel occupancy tax-backed debt issued for the prior convention center in order to pledge a 4.5% hotel tax for the upcoming bonds.
“The refunding bonds are a separate, but related item to the expansion bonds and will only be secured by 2% venue HOT,” city documents said. “The 2% venue HOT will not be pledged to the expansion bonds and will cease to be collected upon final maturity or early payoff of (the refunding bonds).”
A petition drive that would have delayed the project fell 494 signatures short of a requirement for 20,000 valid signatures of registered voters, Austin City Clerk Erika Brady determined in November.
Petition backers are appealing a district court’s refusal to force validation in state appellate court after the Texas Supreme Court dismissed
The petition drive by Austin United PAC and others sought a ballot measure to stop the demolition and reconstruction of the convention center for seven years — or until the project was approved by voters — and prioritize city funding for local live music, arts, cultural, and outdoor tourism.
The Austin City Council also approved as much as $1 billion of water and wastewater system revenue bonds last month for the Walnut Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant expansion and enhancement project. The bonds will be used to obtain a direct low-interest loan from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program.
Other financing sources for the $1.5 billion project are $59 million from the Texas Water Development Board Clean Water State Revolving Fund program and funding from Austin Water.
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The plant, which serves more than 50% of Austin and operates at a treatment capacity of 75 million gallons per day, will have its capacity increased to 100 MGD, helping meet future demand and requirements set by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality for Austin’s projected growth of 1.5 million by 2040, according to a city statement.
A legal logjam over a light rail system eased May 22 when the Texas Supreme Court finally ruled on a procedural issue related to an initial $150 million of bonds for the project. The high court ordered a Travis County Court judge to decide whether the bonds’ issuer, the Austin Transit Partnership, a nonprofit corporation created by the city and Capital Metro Transportation Authority, has standing to seek court validation for the debt.
City taxpayers who filed a lawsuit in 2023, along with the Texas Attorney General’s Office have been challenging the legality of the bonds, which would be paid off with a portion of Austin’s operation and maintenance property taxes
Escalating costs led ATP to downsize Project Connect to an initial less than 10-mile, 15-station system with a similar price tag. The completion of a federal environmental review in January allowed the project to continue a process
ATP said Project Connect is moving forward with construction scheduled to begin next year.
“We are confident in our case and look forward to our day in court,” ATP said in a statement. “The pending litigation has not slowed our progress advancing Austin light rail, which has hit major milestones in the federal funding process, design, and pre-construction work this year.”
Bill Aleshire, an attorney who filed the taxpayers’ lawsuit, cautioned that several issues remain before the court, including the legality of the downsized project and the ability to pay off bonds with property tax revenue that is supposed to be used for operations.
“Their federal funding is uncertain, their ability to issue bonds is uncertain, and they just stubbornly will not listen to us and say it’s time to pause Project Connect and rethink it, that maybe rail isn’t the best way to go at this time and maybe we can’t afford it at this time,” he said.
AUSTIN, Texas (KTRK) — Does the state of Texas have too many law enforcement agencies? That was a topic of discussion at a Texas House Committee meeting on May 28, which focused on police standards and policy.
It was comments from TCOLE Deputy Chief TJ Vineyard that drew the attention of unions and lobbying groups representing law enforcement across Texas.
“We’re starting to look now at encouraging the consolidation of agencies,” Vineyard said during the nearly eight-hour-long hearing.
The response was almost immediate from groups representing various aspects of law enforcement.
One social media post on Facebook from the Texas Law Enforcement Association proclaimed concern about the future of smaller departments across the state, despite an exchange later in the hearing between the committee chair, State Representative Cole Hefner, and TCOLE’s Executive Director, Chief Gregory Stevens.
“We’re not taking police off the street?” Hefner asked. “We’re making sure that we have qualified people that are equipped and trained.”
“One hundred percent,” Stevens said.
According to TCOLE’s own numbers, there are more than 2,700 accredited agencies and some 83,000 peace officers.
The chair asked whether 2,700 was a good or bad thing, given that Texas has more agencies than the next four largest states combined.
“There is a lot of duplicative coverage,” Stevens said, “overlapping coverage. When it comes to resources, it can be inefficient.”
Also speaking on the panel was Jennifer Szimanski with the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT), which also posted on social media about the hearing. While the group wouldn’t comment directly about consolidation, Szimanski told ABC13 that “consolidation is not the legislative intent for TCOLE” and that “we should be forward-looking and raising standards”.
But in a conversation with ABC13, Stevens said targeting smaller departments is not their intent. TCOLE wants every department, regardless of size, to comply with the higher standards implemented in 2023.
“Some of the things that are out there surfing out across social media and on other platforms is that TCOLE wants to shut down small agencies and let sheriff’s offices take over, and that’s absolutely not true. It couldn’t be further from what we’re doing,” Stevens said. “It doesn’t matter about the size of the agencies, and I want to be really clear on that point. TECOL is not out to shut down or to make life hard on a small municipal agency, a school district, police department, or what have you.”
But the larger conversation is not limited to the state of Texas.
Harris County is home to more than 60 agencies. In the last major study on overlap in 2018, Rice University’s Kinder Institute found that consolidation could help address inefficiencies. Kyle Shelton, now at the University of Minnesota, co-authored the report eight years ago.
“It’s really just an opportunity to look at how regional governments, which are often overlapping, best coordinate and collaborate on the services that they’re providing,” Shelton told ABC13.
Whether it’s Harris County or the state of Texas, the cost of funding and maintaining law enforcement agencies is getting more expensive. While consolidation may not be the answer, it is part of a conversation in which Kyle Shelton says governments should be engaging.
“It’s not a quick band-aid to pull off and say, ‘Hey, look, we fixed the budget crisis, or, you know, addressed some efficiencies here in a nice, neat three-month process,” Shelton said. “You know, it likely takes years and a lot of trust building, both with residents and the agencies.”
Texas does have more law enforcement agencies than the next four largest states combined, according to TCOLE.
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AUSTIN, Texas – Pride Month is celebrated each June.
It marks the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising that started in late June 1969. The protests are seen as a turning point in the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement. It inspired marches across the country in the years that followed.
More than a dozen cities and towns across Texas are celebrating with everything from parades to festivals to concerts and more.
A Pride flag is seen held up in a crowd during preparation for a Queer March to the Texas State Capitol on April 15, 2023 in Austin, Texas. (Brandon Bell / Getty Images)
Here’s a look at some of the dates and places Pride events are happening around the Lone Star State this month:
Austin also has a Pride celebration, but it is scheduled for Aug. 22.
The Source: Information in this story came from various sources, including official websites for events. AI was used to help assemble the list of events.
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