This study revealed that the most prominent feature of Nueces River watershed precipitation since 1940 was 

 the 1 950s drought. No particular precipitation trend was apparent unless the basis of comparison is largely the 

 period of drought years. While on average, the La Nina ENSO phase leads to more tropical cyclones in the 

 western Gulf of Mexico, no consistent anomaly across the Nueces River watershed was revealed. This result is 

 important because the Adantic basin may be returning to a more active tropical cyclone period possibly leading 

 to more related storms impacting the Nueces delta. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



This study was conducted uith funding from the Rincon Project allocation. Suggestions and comments from 

 Mike Irlbeck of Reclamation were beneficial and gready appreciated. Editorial reviews were conducted by Mike 

 Irlbeck and Gray Harris of Reclamation. 



LITERATURE CITED 



Asquith, W. H., J. G. Mosier, and P. W. Bush, 1997. Status, Trends, and Changes in Freshwater Inflows to Bay 



Systems in the Corpus Christie Bay National Estuary Program Study Area. CCBNEP-17, Coastal 



Bend Bays and Estuanes Program, Corpus Christi, TX, 

 Cleveland, W. S. 1979. Robust locally weighted regression and smoothing scatterplots. J. Amer. Stat. Assn., 74, 



829-836. 

 Cleveland, W. S., 1981. LOWESS: a program for smoothing scatterplots by robust locally weighted regression. 



The American Statistician, 35, 54. 

 Gershunov, A., and T. Bamett, 1998. ENSO influence on intraseasonal extreme rainfall and temperature 



frequencies in the contiguous United States: Observations and model results. /. Climate, 11, 1575-1586. 

 Gray, W. M., 1968. Global view of the origins of tropical disturbances and storms. Mon. Wea. Rff., %, 669-700. 

 Gray, W. M., 1979. Hurricanes: Their formation, structure and likely role in the tropical circulation. 



Meteorology over the tropical oceans. D. B. Shaw (Ed.), Roy. Meteor. Soc, James Glaisher House, 



Grenville Place, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 IBX, 155-218. 

 Gray, W. M., 1984. Adantic seasonal hurricane frequenc)': Part I: El Nino and 30 mb quasi-biennial oscillation 



influences. Mon. Wea. ^v., 112, 1649-1668. 

 Gray, W. M., C. W. Landsea, P. W. Mielke,Jr., and K. J. Berry, 1993. Predicting Adantic basin seasonal tropical 



cyclone activity by 1 August. Weather Forecasting 8, 73-86. 

 Helsel, D. R., and R. M. Hirsch, 1992. Statistical methods in water resources. New York: Elsevier. 522 p. 

 Hollander, M., and D. A. Wolfe, 1973. Nonparametric statistical methods. New York: John Wiley. 503 p. 

 Irlbeck, MJ. and G.H. Ward. 2000. j\nalysis of the historic flow regime of the Nueces River into the upper 



Nueces Delta, and of the potential restoration value of the Rincon Bayou Demonstration Project. In 



Concluding Report: Rincon Bayou Demonstration Project, Appendix I-C. United States Department 



of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, Austin, Texas. 

 Knaff, J. A., 1997. ImpUcations of summertime sea level pressure anomahes in the tropical Atlantic region. 



Mon. Wea. Rev., 10, 789-804. 

 Landsea, C. W., W. M. Gray, P. W. Mielke, Jr., and K. J. Berry, 1992. Long-term \'anations of Western 



Sahelian Monsoon Rainfall and Intense U.S. Landfalling Hurricanes. J. Climate, 5, 1528-1534. 

 Landsea, C. W., 1993. A Climatology of Intense (or Major) Adantic Hurricanes. Mow. Wea. Rev., 121, 1703-1713. 

 Landsea, C. W., R. A. Pielke, Jr., A. M. Mestas-Nunez, and J. A. Knaff, 1999. Adantic Basm Humcanes: 



Indices of Climatic Changes. Climatic Change, 42, 89-129. 

 Mielke, P. W., K. J. Barry, and E. S. Johnson, 1976. Multi-response permutatation procedures for a priori 



classifications. Commun. Statist. Theor. Meth., A5, 1409-1424. 

 Mielke, P. W., K. J. Barry, and J. G. Medina, 1982. Climax I and II: distortion resistant residual analyses. 



/ Appl. Meteor, 21, 788-792. 

 Miller, R. G., Jr., 1981. Simultaneous statistical inference. New York: Springer- Verlag. 

 Philander, S. G. H., 1989. El Nino, La Niiia, and the Southern Osdllation., Academic Press, New York, 



293 pp. 

 Pielke, Jr., R. A., and C. W. Landsea, 1999. La Nina, El Nino, and Atlantic Hurricane Damages in the United 



States. Submitted to Bull Amer. Meteor. Soc. 

 Shapiro, L. J., 1989, The relationship of the quasi-biennial oscillation to Atlantic tropical storm activit)'. Mon. 



Wea. Rev., 117,2598-2614. 



D-12 ^* Recent Trends in Precipitation Occurring on the Nueces River Watershed of South Texas 



