Does It Snow in Houston? A Climate Guide to When and Why It Happens

Yes, it snows in Houston. The right answer to the question, however, is more interesting than the one-word yes. Houston sits at 29.7 degrees north latitude, roughly the same line as Cairo, Egypt, and northern Florida. The Gulf of Mexico keeps the city humid and temperate; the prevailing southerly flow off the Gulf keeps winter daytime highs averaging in the low 60s; and a true winter weather event in Houston requires an unusual combination of arctic air punching south through the Plains while simultaneous Gulf moisture is in place to actually produce snowfall rather than ice. That combination happens, on average, once every five to ten years, and sometimes a decade or more passes between events. When it happens, the city stops, and the photos go around the world.

This is the climate FAQ piece: how often it snows, when the big events were, why it is rare, and what Houston should do when the rare arctic front rolls through. For preparation guidance for the much more common winter-storm scenario — ice on roads, hard freezes, water main concerns — pair this with our Houston winter weather safety brief and Houston's hurricane preparation guide for the storm-system context.

How often does it snow in Houston?

On average, Houston records measurable snowfall once every four to five years. 'Measurable' means more than a trace — at least 0.1 inches at Bush Intercontinental or Hobby Airport. Most of those years produce a brief overnight dusting that melts by mid-morning. A snow event that produces enough accumulation to close schools and put inches on the ground is significantly rarer: roughly once a decade. Several decades in Houston's recorded climate history (most notably the 1990s and the early 2010s) saw essentially no measurable snow at all.

The pattern requires three things at once. First, an arctic air mass has to push far enough south that the city's surface temperature drops below freezing. Second, a Pacific or Gulf-derived storm system has to deliver moisture into that cold air. Third, the precipitation has to fall in the brief window when the surface and the cloud-base temperature are both supporting snow formation rather than ice or rain. Houston frequently gets one or two of those three. Getting all three at once is the unusual case.

The big Houston snow events

January 21, 2025: the historic Gulf Coast blizzard

On January 21, 2025, a powerful arctic front combined with Gulf moisture to produce the largest snowfall in southeast Texas in decades. The National Weather Service Houston/Galveston office reported 5.5 inches in Baytown, 4.2 inches in El Lago, and roughly 4 inches across southeast Houston including the Third Ward, per the official NWS Houston/Galveston Valentine's storm and snowfall recap pages and Houston Public Media's summary of the city's top snowfall events. Blizzard warnings were issued for portions of southeast Texas and southwestern Louisiana — the farthest-south blizzard warning in the official record.

The January 2025 event was the closest Houston has come to topping its 1960 all-time record in living memory. Schools closed for two days, freeways shut down, and an estimated 40,000 Houston homes lost power. Most of the snow melted within 48 hours as temperatures rebounded into the 50s, which is the typical Houston winter-storm pattern: rapid onset, photogenic peak, fast melt.

February 11-20, 2021: Winter Storm Uri

The Valentine's week 2021 storm is the most consequential Houston winter event in modern memory, although the snow itself was a smaller part of the story. Far north Houston metro saw up to four inches of sleet and snow; the city itself measured around an inch with widespread sleet. The actual damage came from the multi-day arctic freeze — temperatures in single digits at Bush Intercontinental, ice on every untreated surface, the ERCOT-managed Texas power grid failing for days, and millions of Texans losing heat and water simultaneously. Per NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information recap of the Great Texas Freeze, the storm impacted all 254 Texas counties and ranks among the costliest winter weather events in American history.

Uri reset Houston's collective sense of what is possible. Pipes burst in tens of thousands of homes — clay-soil foundations froze, attic pipes ruptured, and the citywide repair window stretched into the spring. The lessons learned from Uri inform the city's current preparation playbook. Our Meyerland real estate context covers one of the neighborhoods that was hit hardest in 2021 and again during subsequent freeze events.

February 14-15, 1895: the all-time record

The official Houston all-time snowfall record dates to February 14-15, 1895, when 20 inches of snow fell on the city over roughly 24 hours. The event also produced the snowiest day on record in New Orleans (8.2 inches) and southern Louisiana broadly. The 1895 storm came at a time when Houston had a population of about 30,000 people and no paved roads; descriptions of the event were largely written for newspapers and folded into oral history. The record has stood for 130 years.

December 22, 1989: the four-day Houston freeze

The 1989 pre-Christmas freeze produced about three inches of snow at Bush Intercontinental and a hard four-day freeze that destroyed most of the citrus and ornamental tropicals on the Texas Gulf Coast. Houstonians who remember the event remember it for the broken pipes and the look of the city under snow more than for the snow amount itself. The 1989 event is the modern-era benchmark Houston meteorologists used to use for storm comparisons before 2021 reset the baseline.

Other notable events

December 10, 2008: snow fell on the city as early in the season as anyone could remember, with one inch accumulation. February 11, 1973: the storm now known as the 'Texas blizzard' brought 4-6 inches across the metro. January 11-12, 1985: roughly an inch and a hard freeze. December 4, 2009: a brief snow event that produced enough accumulation for snowmen in the Heights but melted by noon. Houston has averaged one of these moderate events per decade since records began.

Why is snow so rare in Houston?

Houston's climate is humid subtropical (Koppen classification Cfa), defined by hot, humid summers and mild winters with occasional brief arctic intrusions. The Gulf of Mexico is the single largest controlling factor. Gulf surface water temperatures in winter sit in the 60s, which radiates heat into the lower atmosphere and keeps the marine layer well above freezing even when continental air pushes south. For snow to reach the ground in Houston, the arctic air mass has to be deep enough that the Gulf influence is overwhelmed for a few hours.

Latitude and topography matter too. Houston is at the same latitude as Cairo and Tunis, and on roughly the same plane as Jacksonville, Florida and Mobile, Alabama. There is no elevation to produce orographic lift — the city itself sits at 80 feet above sea level — and no mountain range to block continental cold from sliding south. When the right pattern sets up (a deep upper-level trough over the central plains, an arctic surface front pushing through Oklahoma and Texas, a coastal low spinning Gulf moisture inland) Houston does get snow. The pattern just rarely sets up.

What to do when snow is forecast in Houston

Houston is unlike northern cities in one important way: the road system has essentially no salt or brine pretreatment, the city has a small fleet of plow-equipped trucks, and almost no driver has practical snow or ice driving experience. The first practical rule of a Houston snow forecast is to stay off the roads if you can. Bridges and overpasses freeze first; the I-10 and I-45 elevated sections are the highest-incident locations every freeze event.

Before the storm: Drip every faucet a slow pencil-thick stream on the night the low is forecast below 28 degrees. Disconnect garden hoses, cover outdoor spigots with foam insulators, and open cabinet doors under sinks on exterior walls to let warm air reach the pipes. Park cars in the garage if you have one. Charge phones and laptops. Pull out warm clothes — Houston closets are often light on real winter gear and the right base layers matter.

During the storm: Stay home if you can. If you must drive, slow dramatically, leave four to five times the normal following distance, avoid bridges, and do not use cruise control on any wet or icy surface. Do not run a generator or grill indoors — the carbon monoxide deaths during the 2021 Uri freeze were largely caused by indoor heating from outdoor equipment. Check on elderly neighbors. Houston-area utility outages cluster in older inside-the-Loop neighborhoods where transformer infrastructure is older.

After the storm: Check for burst pipes once temperatures rise above freezing. The most common point of failure is the water line into the house, attic pipes in unheated attics, and the connection at outdoor spigots. Document any damage with photos before any cleanup; insurance claim windows for freeze damage open the day temperatures rebound. Houston's flood-mapping and weather monitoring resources also matter post-thaw because rapid melt and any concurrent rain can produce localized flooding in low-lying neighborhoods.

Will it snow again? When?

On the long-term climate trend, the National Climate Assessment and the NOAA Gulf Coast outlook both project warmer winters for southeast Texas, which on the surface argues for less snow over time. The complication is that the same warming pattern that produces warmer overall winters also produces more volatile arctic-front excursions when the polar vortex destabilizes — exactly the dynamic that produced the 2021 and 2025 Houston events. The honest answer is that Houston will continue to get a major snow or freeze event every five to ten years, with longer dry spells in between, and the probability of any given winter being the snow winter is roughly 10 to 20 percent in any year. The City of Houston disaster recovery hub is the canonical post-event resource for Houstonians dealing with property damage.

When it does snow, the city celebrates briefly, fixes a lot of pipes, and remembers how lucky most years are. Bookmark this guide, drip your faucets when the forecast calls for it, and for any winter event with sustained sub-freezing temperatures, treat the storm seriously — Uri changed the script on how Houston thinks about its winters. For the rest of the city's weather playbook, our Houston flooding guide covers the much more common Houston weather threat, and our hurricane preparation guide covers the seasonal one. For neighborhood-specific freeze and storm context, our Houston neighborhoods guide maps which parts of the city tend to lose power first and which sit at higher elevations.