Ahh, you’ve got to love August in Houston. This is a month when a “cold” front actually means warmer weather, 100 degree days happen not too infrequently, and we face the threat of hurricanes. Today’s post will address all three of these issues, including a look back at this time, last year, to see what we were saying about the approach of Hurricane Harvey.
Tuesday
A dying cold front is north of the Houston area this morning, but should slog through the area today. The net effect of this should be to produce some scattered showers later today and this evening, and some of the embedded thunderstorms could produce briefly intense rains and winds. The chance of rain today is only about 40 percent, but that’s significantly higher than during the rest of the week. Despite the rain chances, for the most part, this should be just another hot and partly sunny August, with high temperatures in the upper 90s to 100 degrees.
Wednesday and Thursday
Some drier air will move in behind the “cold” front, and along with this some higher pressures will build over the region. In August, this means just one thing—some serious summer heat beneath sunny skies. We can expect high temperatures in the vicinity of 100 degrees, perhaps even up to 102 or 103 degrees. The drier air may knock a tad of the humidity out of the air, but it’s still going to be extremely warm out there during the daytime. Please do take precautions, especially for any children participating in outdoor sports practices after school.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
High pressure will ease off heading into the weekend, and this should bring temperatures back below 100 degrees. By Saturday and Sunday we should see the return of some clouds, and this will also bring some slight rain chances—maybe 10 to 30 percent—for the weekend. If you have outdoor plans, I wouldn’t be too concerned at this point.
Hurricane Harvey
One year ago today the United States was marveling at the solar eclipse, which produced a line of totality across the middle of the country. Here in Houston, we were more concerned about clouds blocking the view of a partial eclipse than the remnants of Hurricane Harvey, which were in the Caribbean Sea. It looked like the tropical moisture would remain largely in the southern Gulf of Mexico.
If you’ll remember, August 21st was a Monday, about five and a half days before the heaviest rains moved into Houston. Here’s what we wrote on that morning.
“Not a particularly helpful forecast, is it?” remains one of my favorite lines ever written here.
Thank you! I appreciate your daily emails. It helps me plan my days.
“Not a particularly helpful forecast, is it?” Well, you guys do tell it like it is…quite refreshing and different than what we are bombarded with every day…some guy recently told the nation that “Truth is not truth.” Huh?!
Context is everything, if you don’t understand it, you understand nothing.
Huh??
Milt. don’t bring politics into this, OK?
Go ahead Milt, tell them who said such a dumb thing.
You are right Milt, folks can’t handle the straight up truth with no chaser these days in the good ole U.S. of A. Eric and Matt are my go-to guys for forecast accuracy, and hey, I trust that if they don’t know something or are not 100% sure of the outcome – case in point Harvey on 8/21/17 – they will “keep it real”. The sad part about all of this is because of anthropogenic climate disruption, the forecasting of dangerous storms is only going to get more unpredictable.
Milt, it’s difficult to keep “politics” out of anything these days.
Thank you for all you guys are doing. Hard to believe Harvey has been a year ago. Started following you just before Harvey hit.
Thanks, I’m so proud to be a part of this wonderful city. Let’s keep helping folks that are still in need.
Most definitely!
My neighbors in my condo complex on White Oak Drive are literally moving back into their homes as I type this. We won’t breath easy til Christmas.
I had this discussion with Matt a few days ago. If you want to read someone’s Twitter feed during and after Harvey, this search string will let you see it:
from:wotantx since:2017-08-20 until:2017-09-07
Just substitute the person’s handle you actually want to see. This for sure works in Tweetdeck, but I think it will also work on the main website.
In my own, you can sense the change of emotions, from fascination to worry to fear and then relief.
“If enough of it moves into the Texas coast, we could see a couple of inches of rainfall or quite a bit more”
Oh if only that ended up being true…I suppose the quite a bit more aspect did.
When you say “We really don’t know what is going to happen” we can trust you and dismiss the hype from others. If y’allknew you what was going to happen would tell us. Y’all get an A+ for trust.
This was literally the first posting of yours that I read. A group of neighbors was standing out in the street during the peak of the eclipse, and one of the guys asked is anyone else had seen your morning post. I found Space City Weather on FB, and I quickly became a fan girl.
Unfortunately, 8/21 was the last “normal” day of our collective lives. All of us in that group suffered severe to catastrophic losses as Harvey came ashore on 8/25.
Thank you for being a great source of info for the Coastal Bend.
No question that HOT is infinitely better than a “HARVEY THE SEQUEL”
Living in The Woodlands well away from Spring Creek, I fortunately only had to keep my back yard drains clear of debris during the 30 inch deluge in our area.
😬. I recently re-upped on my flood insurance for the 19th time.
A conversation I had well over a year and a half ago (lightly edited to make me seem smarter and better looking) at a place I no longer work:
“I’m telling you, Houston floods on a yearly basis and it’s national news each time. For very cheap, we could get our name on this weather blog and people in the city who we 1) work for and 2) want to work for would see us prominently supporting the city when they turn to the site for weather news in a time of crisis.”
“Is it in the budget?”
“No.”
“Well, you can go ahead and run it by Raghu, but corporate will never approve it.”
Not too long after, I believe Reliant began their sponsorship and good on them for doing so!
Any thoughts on the hurricane approaching Hawaii?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/two-hurricanes-have-hit-hawaii-in-a-century-a-third-one-is-bearing-down/
Eric
In the year or two (maybe), but not too long after Allison, one Sunday the Chronicle had a big spread about the storm. One entire page, however, was not about Allison but about how puny it was compared to historical storms. It had color graphics of the greater Houston area showing what estimated rainfall totals and coverage would have been based on the reports at the time for some 4-6 different storms that hit Houston. Every once and a while I look at the Chronicle online archives but haven’t been able to figure out how to find it, or even if it is available online. I have wondered how Harvey compares to that.