Welcome to Brazos Matters.

I'm Jay Socol.

So, just over a year ago, we had one of Aggieland's most recognizable and trusted people in the community, in the Brazos Matters guest chair, Shel Winkley.

So you know, Shel, he was part of the KBTX weather team for more than 14 years and chief meteorologist for nearly 11 of those, he was the man the sleeves rolled up when the worst was hitting or at least on the way here.

And we knew he was leaving television, but he didn't say where he was going until he was our guest.

So Shel is now a weather and climate engagement specialist with Climate Central for about a year or so.

And we're going to learn what that's been like.

Plus, we're going to talk about what climate data tells him about the evolution of this community.

Ladies and gentlemen, Shel Winkley.

Howdy, friends.

You know, there was a time, you know, the sleeves rolled up, the jacket comes off.

Everyone's like, that's like a threat level, right?

Like, it's leveling up.

The severe weather coverage.

Sure.

It was just hot in the studio.

But as I got older, I started wearing glasses, and one day I put glasses on and somebody on Facebook was like glasses.

We've never seen them.

Were glasses like, what does this mean, threat level midnight?

I just couldn't see the screen.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, really, the stereotype is the jacket comes off, a tie is either loosened or goes away and the sleeves go up.

Yeah, I know.

It's just hot, you know?

You know, it's serious when the sleeves go up.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, it was just hot.

It was just hot.

All right, well, wait a way to tear down that little myth.

Okay, So remind people what your workdays look like now at Climate Central.

And why do you do it?

Yeah, So gave up the studio, and now I work in a closet in the back of my kids playroom.

It's the same closet you saw me working and doing forecasts from during COVID.

Yeah.

Took out the camera on the TV.

I put up some what's called hipster octopus wallpaper behind me, and that's where I work now.

I talk on Zoom a lot, but what I'm doing, you know, Climate Central, we're a non advocacy nonprofit that deals with the science and the data of weather and climate change, but specifically the storytelling around that data.

So what we do is you probably saw some of those graphics when I was on air here in town.

We did that for over 240 cities here in the United States.

So we do the hard part, we do the data, we do the science, and we give that to journalists and we give it to meteorologists and we help them tell the stories because I knew the story in Bryan College Station right.

A meteorologist in Houston or Dallas or Austin knows the stories for their cities.

You know, how is this heat impacting those cities?

So that's what we do.

We help make that connection of climate change.

We help make that science clear and understandable so that then communities and people can take that information and do something about it, do something about climate change.

So within this new team, what have you had to learn along the way and based on your experience, what have you had to teach these folks you work with?

Yeah, let me answer the second one first, because I think that was, you know, I when it came down to it, I really struggled like, do I loved KBTX, I loved broadcast news.

I think they're important.

What you do is important every day, right?

But my justification was I can teach the ten students I got to teach here at Texas A&M and I could teach a couple of interns every year how to talk about weather and climate change.

I could talk to this community or I can take what I know and go help other meteorologists and journalists across the country and globally talk about climate change and talk about it simply.

So that's been a really cool part of it.

I think what I've learned is that there's a lot right when we talk about climate change, there's different things we can look at.

We can look at trends.

The data you know, the data doesn't lie.

The data is there.

But what I really think is cool, we used to be able to say that no one weather event could be called climate change, right now.

What we can do with that is not to say this weather event was made because of climate change, but now we can use what's called attribution science and we can say to what degree, how much more intense was a weather system, a hurricane, a heatwave?

How much more likely is that now and then a future warming?

How much more likely will that be or how much more intense could a hurricane be?

How much more rainfall with a drop using the science?

So, again, a hurricane is going to hurricane because that's weather right?

But now we have the science to understand the climate change fingerprint on these extreme weather events.

And then we use that knowledge to say, okay, if we don't change something, here's how much worse an event like this could be in the future.

And that's important because it's important to understand the weather that we're experiencing.

The way that you experience climate change, is there extreme weather, whether you're walking outside to it or you're scrolling on your phone and you see the videos and the pictures?

Yeah, yeah.

Just how many times have I going to have to replace my roof because of hail?

Right.

It seems like it's getting more often.

You alerted me to a couple of lists that College Station in Bryan have found themselves ranking really high on, and I want to get your thoughts about those.

So let's start with AARP's recent rankings of Metro metro areas with the fastest growing retiree populations that are prone to heat waves, hurricanes, floods and things like that.

So College Station Bryan ranks number four on that list nationally.

Why do we rank so high?

Yeah, so AARP actually came to us and they were asking, you know, how can we tell the story?

So we're looking specifically at people that are 65 years or older.

We have a lot of old who love to come back to this community, retire here so that they can go watch Aggie football.

Sure.

Baseball, softball, track, whatever it is.

So the reason that we're in the list, it basically looked at two things, heat and floods.

And I think if you've lived around here, we've seen both of those.

But the bigger issue of that is going to be heat.

So what we know is that College Station, when we're looking at what's called the 95th percentile for heat, so think of it as the hottest day that you would expect to feel.

And Bryan and College Station, which is about 98, 99 degrees, we know that on average this is using that attribution science of fingerprint.

We know that on average about 24 more days.

So almost an entire month more each year is made that hot or hotter because of climate change influence on Bryan and College Station.

So we're number four there.

And we also know that the annual flood loss that we could see in the city every single year because of flooding events.

Think of what happened here in town in May.

We had a big rain event.

We had one last May, $4.3 million a year is what could be lost in Bryan College Station because of flooding.

And as we go into the future, it's projected another 5.8%.

So that's another 250,000 per year that we could see as climate change continues with the rain event because we're not coastal.

So we're talking about inland freshwater flooding.

We know that with climate change the atmosphere is a greedy atmosphere.

It can hold more moisture.

That's just simple physics that we learned back in junior high.

Or maybe you're forgotten since junior high.

I forgot since junior high.

Yeah.

And so if it can hold more moisture that means the droughts can get worse.

It can take more moisture from vegetation from our grounds.

But it also means that what goes up must come down.

And it means that the rainfall rates are getting heavier and our rain events, while they may become fewer, they are getting heavier and they can lead to more flooding.

So if I'm a retiree, if I'm an old AG with plans to come back to the motherland, you know, so I can watch Aggie football and so forth, like what do I do with this information?

Yeah.

So AARP really wants to do this because, you know, the reason that people decide to go live somewhere to retire is because they want to enjoy the community.

They want to make sure that they're safe, that their assets are safe.

You want to come watch Aggie sports.

So what do you do with that information?

I think, first of all, is think about how hot Aggie football is.

You know, last season I wore long sleeves to one game and that was it.

Not to say they were uncomfortable every game.

But you know, that's that's not exactly normal.

Right?

So think about the things that you're putting yourself, especially when it comes to heat.

If you're coming back to Bryan and College Station because you do want to go watch Aggie athletics, you're putting yourself outside.

And when it comes to spring time, the beginning of summertime and then the end of summertime, you're putting yourself into heat that could make you sick.

That could be harmful to you.

And that's just one example of of what that he can do for our, you know, our population for retirees essentially.

Any more insights on that particular ranking before we go to the next one?

Yeah, I think what's interesting is ahead of us on the list is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Wilmington, North Carolina, Raleigh, North Carolina.

So you're looking at places that are retiring because of hurricanes and sea level rise.

Just behind us on the list, Austin, Texas, which has a lot more concrete than us, but also has as the same climate fingerprint and Boise, Idaho, weight.

How'd they creep in there?

They are actually one of the fastest warming cities in the United States.

Reno, Nevada, is actually the absolute fastest that we've analyzed, but Boise is usually at the top of the list.

Yeah, but heat again, comes down to heat.

Okay.

You ready to move on to the next ranking to it?

So you sent me this one.

The Wall Street Journal recently ranked College Station Bryan number three on its list of upcoming boomtowns with a projected economic growth of nearly 178% over the next 50 years.

Cities celebrate that kind of thing.

I found that is a bragging point.

Yeah.

On the City of College Station's website.

But why does this concern you?

Yeah.

Okay.

So we've talked about climate change when you think about it, not just focusing on summer, but it's easiest because that's where we feel the heat.

So everyone's argument is always against climate change is always what's Texas.

Of course it's hot, right?

You've got the heat of the summer and then you've got the heat that's being added because of climate change.

And then with all of this growth, which is great, you get economics, you get knowledge, you get these businesses that we enjoy.

Not saying that that's bad, but people have to live somewhere.

Our roads have to get bigger.

We're putting more cars out there.

So essentially what we're doing is we're we're taking away our natural Bryan College Station green space and we're building up the environment.

So another human cause aspect of this year is urban heat island effect, right?

We're adding more things to the city that on top of climate change are also going to make it hotter to live here and to enjoy our time here.

For all those people that are going to be moving here, is it going to be too hot for them to actually enjoy living here by that point?

So talk about heat islands, because I have to tell you, I didn't I was not familiar with the term urban heat islands until my latter days, my latter months with the City of College Station, when they made a presentation to the city council and so forth.

Talk about heat islands and what that means here.

Yeah.

Okay.

So think about, you know, if you're a long time Brazos County or Bryan and College Station residents.

Right.

Think about what's the city used to look like.

What the campus used to look like.

And then now think about how much how many more buildings, roads, subdivisions, all of that has been added.

And again, not saying that that's a bad thing, but we have to think about how we're doing it.

Sure.

So essentially what we've done is we've taken away natural vegetation, natural greenspace that naturally kept us cool and kept it as the classic.

This is Texas.

It's always hot and humid and it's adding heat because the roads absorb and emit heat buildings, especially all the high rises that we've seen go up in town, take in the heat and then re-emit it.

Our cars on the road, we're seeing more of those.

I drove down university today and I try not to do that because it's usually so packed, right?

Yeah, those emit heat and then when the temperature goes up, we crank our AC up and while it's keeping you cool on the inside, it's emitting heat on the outside.

So all of those factors are adding heat.

So it's that urban heat island, right?

It's always going to be a little hotter inside the city than it is going to be.

Maybe if you live near a park or if you live outside of the city.

Yeah, well, speaking of College Station, I know that I guess it was in late 2021 when they first started talking about taking some steps to cool College Station.

I think the initiative was called Cooling College Station and mostly through tree plantings.

And I was skimming through their current budget document and it showed that they had allocated, I believe is $375,000 to plant 400 trees.

I think at a couple of parks is where the the location was going to be good step.

But me and my simple thinking planning more trees at a park is great.

But should we be trying to plant more trees in some proximity of where high rises are going in displacing that natural environment you were talking about?

Yeah.

So one, you know, when people ask us, yeah, I do a lot of interviews now just talking about different climate change aspects.

And that's always the question is I always think I'm going to leave you with this.

What can I do?

I want to just drop a bunch of information on you and yeah.

And say like, go figure it out.

Native vegetation and especially green canopies, trees are a great way to start because it shields that concrete and those those unnatural things that are warming our city.

And so the heat can absorb into it and then re-emit Right?

Parks are great because we do like going to the I can't tell you how many times my kids want to go to a park in the summertime or go to the splash pad.

And that's great for them.

But I'm not getting in the splash pad and it's just hot.

So it's not a bad place to start.

But one thing we know about climate change and we know about urban Heat Island, in fact, is that it doesn't you know, heat doesn't impact us all equally.

Those with lower incomes or they live, you know, in a place that doesn't have a lot of yard space or green space.

We know that they feel hotter because they're living in more built up environments, Right.

So when we're talking about where we can put trees, those are the neighborhoods really that need them the most.

The ones that have more big buildings that a lot of families will have in lot more concrete, a lot more parking lots, because you have to put so many parking spaces in for these buildings.

Yeah, parking lots, even though you don't think about them as anything other than a place to put your car, which is kind of a wild idea.

Anyway, that would be a great place to bring down some of that heat, because that's one of the biggest places that we see come from as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you're just tuned in.

I'm Jay Socol, you're listening to Brazos Matters.

We're visiting with Shel Winkley, former chief meteorologist at KBTX and now a climate engagement specialist at Climate Central.

So in terms of cooling our community, are there more impactful solutions than simply planting trees?

Like do any cities come to mind that you observe for reducing or reversing the effects of these increasing temperatures?

Yeah, you know, planting is one of the easiest things we can do, and that's before you get into the idea of water, because water is important for everybody in Texas.

And I think if you're not thinking about water in the future, you should be right and plants need water.

But yeah, you know, San Antonio has a great program.

I was watching a thing on KSAT news.

You could go to the city and get funds to go buy native plants that are native to San Antonio, and they would pay you to put those in your yard because it's lower water that they need because they're they're heat resistant and they helped to bring down the temperature in your neighborhood.

So the city of San Antonio said, yes, we'll fund this if you're willing to do the work and go and put these plants in the ground as a great initiative.

Sounds nice.

Yeah.

The city of Dallas, they led one of the largest urban heat assessments in the United States, and they also focused heavily on trees and plants, but also things like green roofs or cool roofs.

So instead of absorbing the heat that's coming down on these big sky rise buildings or these big, you know, multilevel buildings, it reflects it back off.

So it's not absorbing and re emitting essentially, because that's how we feel or I think that's important maybe to step back for a second just to go to meteorology.

You're not feeling the heat from the sun directly, right?

You're feeling the heat that's being absorbed into the ground, turn into a different wavelength of energy and then warming up the air around it.

So the sun's bypassing, you feel it, but the sun's bypassing you and actually warming the ground, which then warms the air around us.

Okay.

Interjecting quickly.

Yes.

What do you think about rooftops that, you know, have gardens and other greenery?

Is that gimmicky or is that no feasible?

It's great.

It for multiple reasons.

We don't see much of that here.

We don't we I think we have one here on campus or we did at one point.

I think we do I'm glancing over at Matt, do we have one of those?

Yeah he's he's nodding yes Yeah so they're great because they're multi especially in cities right.

There's not a lot of areas for a neighborhood garden or for you to go and grow your own food if you want to.

So of course the tops of the roofs and it allows us to do something with the space that's useful, which is make a salad, make, make, produce, make dinner for the night.

Yeah, we need more of that here on campus.

I would love to see more.

The gardens is a great place, You know, that's a great example of how you can use a space and grow plants to make things cooler.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

Yeah.

So development of growth you talked about.

It's everywhere, Bryan, and College Station and on the Texas A&M University campus and that's a great sign.

You know, if I remember hearing the the saying, if you're not growing, you're dying.

And I don't know if that's trite or if it's if it's accurate, but we are growing it show some prosperity.

But maybe the most visible representation of that growth are all the high rises in Northgate.

I mean, they there are a bunch of things going up right now at the same time.

So with Legacy Point and other high rises popping up, could these things in this kind of concentrated area have a real cumulative impact on on our climate?

It's not good.

It is.

They are okay and we know so we've done the studies.

We've looked at different cities all across the United States, including Bryan and College Station.

And so essentially when you walk around campus, let's start here.

It can feel as hot as eight degrees hotter on a summer day than it would if you're walking around a park because of all the buildings and the concrete we have here on campus.

Let's go across university, drive to Northgate, Northgate, right now.

And that's not you know, we've got new sky rises being built right now and more parking garages.

They go with it.

Right now, Northgate feels about seven and a half degrees warmer on a summer afternoon than it would if you didn't have that built up environment than it would for an old AG who graduated maybe in the seventies.

If you're seven and a half degrees warmer for you today walking around Northgate than it did for those acts that were class of 70, 75.

Give me more trees over there.

More trees, trees, more shade structures more So I mean, yeah, you know, there are reasons why you're seeing that kind of intense development over there, obviously, what concentration of students is they can walk or bike over, don't necessarily need cars, keeps them from congesting, other arterials and so forth.

But temperatures are going to go up, tempo is going to go up.

And so you've got all these people living in one area and you've got a Northgate district that we want to continue to see vibrant and the businesses thriving there as well, because that's, again, economic growth.

But who wants to be outside on a July afternoon when it's above what is the hottest temperature that we expect in a year?

And then it can feel as much as 7 to 10 degrees on top of that, Right.

Like you don't want to be outside visiting these these areas or experiencing the city because it is so hot inside.

If you go down the street just a little bit.

Century square, beautiful area.

Sure.

Lots of things to do that can feel as much as eight degrees hotter than what the air temperature is because of all the concrete and the Astroturf and all the things we have there.

I think what is the most interesting and maybe the most staggering for me, can you guess, in all of Brazos County, where the biggest urban heat island impact is, man, put you on the spot.

Costco, South College Station?

No, sorry.

Let me back up.

Say Costco again.

Costco, South Brazos County, South Brazos, south Brazos County.

So what's interesting, there's a lot of growth that's happened down there, right?

Don't tell me Santa's Wonderland.

It's not Santa's Wonderland.

Maybe in December, but it's LED lights now, so they're not emitting as much right now.

There's been a lot of growth down there.

And I thought that was staggering.

Was that even in the you know everyone thinks about Bryan College Station, all the concrete that's happening around here.

But think about how much development has happened on the south end of the county.

I guess that's right.

They now experience versus what, just ten, 20 years ago.

Yeah, almost nine degrees warmer on a summer afternoon than what you would have if you lived out there say in the nineties or even the early 2000, because this, I guess was greenfield and now suddenly roads, subdivision houses.

Yeah.

Rooftops like crazy.

Yeah.

Wow.

Interesting.

I thought that was interesting cause I really thought that campus in the Northgate area would have been the highest number one up south Brazos County.

So for, for people who either have lived here a long time or they they used to go to school here left and they've come back and they say, wow, the weather really feels different.

Like, is the weather really different here?

Because when I was here in the eighties, I recall it raining a lot and then it feels like it didn't really rain that much for a while, but now it feels like it's raining a lot of like, is it is this change real or do we just not remember correctly?

No, that's the thing is like when you talk about the extreme weather events, right, you have to go off people's memories.

And that's that's a big factor right here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's essentially weather whiplash.

So I remember when I first got here in 2009 and started working on BVTM with our good friend Barbara Smith.

Right.

I remember coming from Amarillo, Texas, and I had all these severe weather ideas and my news director, Mike George at the time was like, this is this is great.

We don't have that much severe weather here.

And I think it was around 2015 that me and the team really noticed like a shift.

Big hail events, more tornado events, more flooding events.

Like you could just see that with the severe weather itself.

But again, there's a lot of different things.

So we know using attribution, science, just looking at the trends of data, we see the upward trend that the temperatures have taken right.

Again, the atmosphere is greedier.

So while we may see these big rain events in the spring, we get to the summer, which is historically dry anyway.

But the atmosphere can take more moisture from vegetation from the ground.

So that puts us into droughts faster and it makes it harder to get out of those droughts because one rain event even if it's a good soaking rain event and then you don't get another one for another month, that rain is just going to get absorbed right back out.

So, yeah, it's not your imagination.

That's not to say that every weather event is climate change, but because of the warming that we've experienced, about 2023 was the hottest summer of record for Bryan and College Station, surpassing 2011 and 2012 when they tied 2023 was the Earth's hottest year of record, only to be undone by 2024, which was the Earth's hottest year of record, and then also became the United States hottest year of record as well.

2025.

Right now, we're on pace for the same.

But if the forecast holds, we we probably won't be the Earth's hottest year again this year, but it likely will end in a top three this year.

So because you are a data guy and data helps you do some predictive work, what do you see coming at us, say, in the fall and the winter?

Like what lies ahead for us, in your opinion?

Yeah.

So a couple different things.

One, if you really like cool weather, like you like a cool October, who doesn't?

I love October and it feels like they've been kind of stolen from us right?

You want to get you got the summertime feels off.

You want to get the boots with the fur and the the pumpkin spice lattes out.

We understand that fall is a shrinking season because summers lasting longer.

We understand that winter is one of the when you look at the United States, winter is the fastest warming season.

And it's because fall weather is lingering a little longer and spring weather is starting sooner.

So beyond temperatures, that also means that severe weather season can start sooner.

Good.

You get the rain, but we don't like getting the rain when you have hail that melts down like we saw at the beginning of the year, right?

Yeah.

So you get those severe weather storms earlier are droughts again, they can become worse, but it's this big whiplash back and forth because to these big periods of drought, then you get these big rain events that cause flooding.

And Texas is a land of drought, like we know that it's it's a drought that's going to be broken by a flood.

But we're seeing that back and forth a lot more.

Yeah.

So with our remaining couple of minutes here, beyond plant, more trees, more native plants, as much greenery is as you can conserve the water that you use, all those good things.

Any advice for us as we as we live season to season and Aggie land Yeah.

So this is the this is the part that of the conversation where really people don't love to hear.

But the we know the problem is burning coal and oil and methane gas.

Right.

That's essentially put this big wool blanket on the earth that has warmed things up.

We have technology.

It's getting cheaper by the day that we can use renewable energy.

Texas uses it a lot.

You know, one of the reasons that we haven't had blackouts or brownouts or rolling blackouts in the summertime, that ERCOT to be able to manage the grid is because they relied on battery power in the morning.

In the evening, they were juiced up partially because of renewable energy.

We're one of the states that have the biggest wind energy and the biggest solar energy in the United States.

That's a great thing that we can use.

Not to say that we have the only thing is renewable, but we can put a lot of effort on that.

Not everybody can go out and buy solar panels.

Not everybody can go out and buy an EV, Right.

So the things that you can do.

Yes.

The native vegetation is cool.

Everyone always ask us like, what's that one thing that I can do and can I really make a difference as one person?

If you plant something really cool in your garden, in your neighborhood, maybe your neighbor walking their dog is going to say like, that's really cool.

I want to do that too, right?

So you can spark that.

But the biggest thing I think I want to take away is the thing that we're doing today communication and conversation is a solution.

And so just have those conversations with your friends, your neighbors, go to city council, talk with them.

We love the city.

We all don't especially love being overly hot.

Let's see what we can do.

Shell Winky, thank you so much for being on Brazos Matters.

Friend of KAMU, always great to see you.

Always good to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you guys for listening and for watching and hope you have a great day.

You've been listening to Brazos Matters on KAMU.