Ask an Austinite about the summer of 2026 and you will get one of two answers, depending on which month they mean. July was about water. August was about heat. Between them they made a season that was hard to ignore, and easy to forget the rest of — so here is the rest of it.
July: the water
In mid-July, storms dropped more than 20 inches of rain on the Texas Hill Country over four days. The Pedernales River near Fredericksburg rose almost 24 feet in a single morning and crested above 34 feet, its highest level since 1979. Rain gauges at Knippa recorded more than 26 inches, Uvalde more than 21, Kerrville more than 19. Governor Abbott declared a disaster in 59 counties on July 14. Three people were killed, in Kerr, Uvalde and Val Verde counties, and more than 500 people were rescued statewide.
Austin was spared the worst of it. Camp Mabry’s rainfall for the whole of July came to 4.24 inches — a wet month, not a catastrophic one. What reached the city arrived as water management rather than flooding: LCRA opened floodgates at Tom Miller Dam on July 17 and two floodgates at Mansfield Dam on July 18, its first flood operation in seven years, and the city banned watercraft on Lady Bird Lake, Lake Austin and the Colorado River below Longhorn Dam until July 23 because of fast water and debris.
The one lasting benefit: on July 18, LCRA reported that inflows had filled lakes Buchanan and Travis for the first time since 2019, with combined storage slightly above 100%. Lake Travis peaked around 105% of capacity on July 21. It is worth keeping that in proportion, though — full lakes are not the same as a finished drought. The Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer district was still in Stage 3 Exceptional Drought in early August.
The flooding came almost exactly a year after the July 2025 Guadalupe River disaster in Kerr County, which killed more than 100 people. Analysts credited the far lower toll in 2026 to how the rain fell — spread over several days rather than in a single overnight burst, leaving time to warn and evacuate.
August: the heat
August ran hot enough to be its own story. Twenty-nine of the month’s 31 days reached 100 degrees at Camp Mabry. The peak came on the weekend of August 22 and 23, when the thermometer hit 107 both days, tying one daily record and breaking another. It was the fifth-warmest August in a record that runs back to 1897.
Austin also came within one degree of a streak it would rather not have had. Had August 14 reached 100 instead of stalling at 99, the city would have run 32 consecutive triple-digit days — second only to the 45-day run of 2023. The 99 broke it. A 33-day dry spell finally ended on August 27 with three tenths of an inch of rain.
What happened anyway
The weather did not cancel the summer. A few of the things that filled it:
Blues on the Green returned to the Zilker Great Lawn on June 9 and 10 — still free, still the longest-running series of its kind here. Alejandro Escovedo, Aaron Behrens and Kylie Hernandez played the first night; Brownout, Mama Duke, and Nik Parr & The Selfless Lovers the second.
The Confluence opened on June 6. Phase II of Waterloo Greenway added roughly 13 acres along Waller Creek between 4th Street and Lady Bird Lake, at the edge of downtown, at a cost of $91.5 million, with three lattice bridges, an 800-foot boardwalk, more than 1,600 new trees and an off-street trail tying the Lance Armstrong Bikeway, Palm Park, Rainey Street and the Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail together. It is the largest addition to downtown park space in years.
Juneteenth brought the annual parade through East Austin on June 19, stepping off near East MLK Jr. Boulevard and ending in a festival at Rosewood Neighborhood Park.
July 4 split between two poles: the Austin Symphony’s 49th Star-Spangled Fest at Auditorium Shores, free with fireworks over the lake, and Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnic out at the Germania Insurance Amphitheater with Billy Strings, Sheryl Crow, Lukas Nelson, Wilco, Margo Price and Rodney Crowell.
Hot Summer Nights took over the Red River Cultural District July 16–18, free and entirely local across Mohawk, Stubb’s, Chess Club and the rest of the strip.
The Zilker Summer Musical staged Singin’ in the Rain at the Hillside Theater from July 10 through August 15 — free, outdoors, and committed enough to stage an actual onstage rainstorm for the title number in a summer that had opinions about rain.
Olivia Rodrigo taped Austin City Limits at the Moody Theater on July 29, part of the show’s 52nd season.
Austin Pride filled Fiesta Gardens on August 22 with the parade and an all-day festival — held, as it happened, on the hottest day of the year.
Austin FC’s August
The club’s summer had two halves. On June 8 it named Jim Curtin — two-time MLS Coach of the Year with the Philadelphia Union — as its third head coach, though not until the end of the 2026 season, with Davy Arnaud staying on as interim.
Then came the Leagues Cup. Austin FC beat Club Tijuana on August 6, Club Puebla on August 9, and Club América on August 13, that last one 1–1 through 90 minutes and 6–5 on penalties, with Brad Stuver making the save that settled it in the sixth round. The run ended on August 26 in New Jersey, where Toluca won 2–0 against an Austin side reduced to nine men. In between, on August 16, 18-year-old academy product Ervin Torres scored his first MLS goal against FC Dallas at Q2 Stadium.
Opened, closed, changed hands
New this summer: Shug’s Bagels brought kettle-boiled bagels to the old Austin Java corner at 1206 Parkway in Clarksville. A Little Shady opened August 4 in Kyle, run by a former Shady Grove managing partner who started there as a busboy in 1993 — green chile cheese fries and the Shady Thang margarita included. Hermanas opened on East 6th with a Mexican-Thai-Lao menu, Hopdoddy opened in Mueller on August 23, and Local Foods added a dinner-focused second location near North Campus. Picnik closed its Burnet Road location on July 27 and reopened on August 24 as something quite different — one farm-to-table meal a day. And Texas French Bread came back to Rio Grande Street over the summer, four years after the fire.
Gone or going: Satellite ATX served its last day in Circle C on July 26 after about two decades. Valhalla announced in late August that it will close on October 26 after 17 years on Red River. And the Paramount Theatre went dark in June for an eight-to-nine-month, $65 million restoration — its 52nd Summer Classic Film Series carried on next door at the State Theatre and the Bullock IMAX.
One closure was temporary and very 2026: Barton Springs Pool shut on June 15 after the month’s heaviest rain and reopened on June 23, once crews had cleared branches, cans and fishing hooks out of the water and put the diving boards back.
What’s ahead
The calendar picks up quickly. Bat Fest takes the Congress Avenue Bridge on September 5 — it is often called an August tradition, but this year it is not. COTALAND, the theme park at Circuit of the Americas, opens September 26 with 34 rides. Still Austin Quarter, a 15,000-square-foot hospitality complex on Willow Springs Road, opens in September. Formula 1 returns to COTA October 22–25. And AEG announced in August that its 4,000-capacity United Heritage Hall will open on Riverside Drive in spring 2027.
Looking ahead rather than back? We have a guide to Austin this fall, and you can browse all 197 buildings in the directory — or read what those 197 buildings add up to, counted building by building.
Austin Apartment Buildings is a reference directory for the city’s largest apartment properties. We publish this kind of local roundup because the people using the directory live here — and because a building is easier to understand alongside the city around it. Every date and figure above is drawn from published sources; if we have something wrong, tell us and we will correct it.