Month: April 2020

Houston faces a soaker of a weekend

Well Houston, you were promised two days of beautiful, spring-like weather. Now that you’ve had them we’re heading back to a more moist, warm period through this weekend and most of next week. Let’s put it this way—we’re unlikely to see the 50s in Houston again until at least the weekend of April 11th. The bigger news, for now, is the likelihood of a wet weekend.

Thursday

Temperatures are starting out in the 60s this morning, and should warm into the mid- to upper-70s. Highs will depend in part on cloud cover, and if you see a few slivers of sunshine this afternoon it will make things a little bit warmer. Scattered light to moderate rain showers will be possible this afternoon and evening, especially north of Interstate 10, but we don’t expect anything too impactful. Winds will be mostly light, out of the southeast at 10 mph or less. Low temperatures tonight will probably fall down only to around 70 for most.

Severe weather outlook for Friday. (NOAA)

Friday

This will be another day like Thursday, albeit with a little bit better rain chances, and temperatures perhaps rising a little closer to 80 degrees during the day time. Friday night will be warm again, with a modest chance of thunderstorms, again with the best chances north and west of downtown Houston. The strongest thunderstorms should remain to the west of Harris County, near a slow-moving cold front as shown in NOAA’s severe weather outlook above.

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Space City Rewind: What the heck happened in March 1907?

As Eric noted on Monday, March was a remarkable month this year for how warm it was in Houston. But it was not quite like March 1907, which will remain atop the leaderboard for warmest March in Houston’s recorded history.

Three of Houston’s top 10 warmest Marches have occurred in the last four years. None could beat March of 1907. (NOAA)

Although we are in a warming climate, where warm records have tended to outnumber cold records by a 2:1 margin in recent years,  when you look back at history, you will occasionally find some random, weird anomalous events. The month of March in 1907 ranks among them.

Houston in March 1907

Cast your mind back more than a century ago. In 1907 Houston was but a town, with roughly 60,000 residents. Whereas today Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States, it was nowhere near the top 10 rankings of most populated cities of that era.

March 1907’s daily weather. The month started pretty warm and just kept going from there. (NOAA)

There was little about March 1907 that was cool in Houston. More than half of the month (16 days) saw low temperatures of 65° or warmer, a record for any March. Over the last 10 years, in a warm climate, in a much more robustly developed Houston, we have only averaged 6 to 7 mornings that warm in March. This year’s March is the closest to rival that since 1955, matching that year’s 14 days of not dropping below 65 degrees.

Houston only had one 90 degree day in March 1907, but the city recorded 15 days above 85 degrees that year, which is far and away the record for any March. The next closest are 1908 and 2017 when we accomplished that feat a mere 8 times. This year’s March only saw 5 days above 85 degrees.

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Enjoy today’s sunshine and drier air because…

Good morning. If you like sunshine, and less humidity, be sure and step outside today to soak some of it up. As we’ll discuss in this post, the region faces several days of partly- to mostly- to completely cloudy weather before conditions truly clear out again. Clouds will come first, and then rain later this week, likely peaking in intensity and coverage on Saturday with a decent soaking for most of the region.

After Wednesday, a lot of clouds for Houston. (Weather Bell/Space City Weather)

Wednesday

Conditions are clear and cool across Houston this morning, with temperatures ranging from the upper 40s near Conroe down to around 60 degrees right along the coast. These will likely be Houston’s coolest temperatures for the next 10 days as a warmer pattern begins to return later today with onshore winds. Still, this will be an exceptional spring day, with highs in the mid-70s and partly to mostly sunny skies. Low temperatures Wednesday night will be 5 to 10 degrees warmer than Tuesday night.

Thursday

The region’s pattern change really kicks in on Thursday as southerly winds get blowing, gusting up to 20 mph. We can expect partly to mostly cloudy skies, with highs in the upper 70s. Some light, scattered rain showers will be possible with the moisture return, but don’t expect anything heavy, or to last too long. Lows Thursday night will begin to feel more sticky, dropping only into the upper 60s.

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