Well, it was close. And with the humidity it sure felt a lot hotter than 90° out. But the official weather site at Bush Intercontinental Airport peaked at 89° this afternoon and now appears to be cooling off slightly as evening comes upon us.
It seems likely that a combination of cloud cover and scattered to widespread showers on Thursday and Friday will limit temperatures to the mid-80s. We’ll then have to concern ourselves with highs approaching 90° during the Memorial Day weekend, but I’d say at this point there’s a decent chance we’ll get out of May without the mercury hitting 90. That hasn’t happened since 1970 in Houston.
Should we be looking for excessively destructive storms on Friday all across Houston, Eric?
No we should not.
I know this is a tough call right now, because we don’t know how the mesoscale will evolve, but it still looks (to me) like the best chances of heavy rain/severe weather, lie in Huntsville, Madisonville, Crockett and points north of the Houston metro. So why has SPC put us in the slight risk?
Because while the best chances are probably NW of Houston, they are definitely not zero in Houston itself.
Eric, this question is a little bit off the wall, but I’ll ask anyway:
Is it just possible that the tropical system likely to form off the SE US coast might siphon some Gulf moisture away from the storm system the NWS thinks will impact the area on Friday?
Please say yes!
No.
Well, that’s fine and dandy for IAH, but as George Carlin pointed out in his Hippy Dippy Weatherman routine, “nobody lives at the airport”.
In my part of town, where people actually live, Wunderground showed we hit 93.6F today, and were at or over 90F from 1:15 to around 5:30, or a little over 4 hours.
Summer has begun. (Expletive deleted).
Wunderground showed we were just under 91. Just sayin’…
It made it to 93 degrees at my house.