Good morning. It was quite a wet afternoon and evening on Thursday, though outside of a few areas of localized flooding, the rain didn’t cause too much heartburn. Except in Deer Park, where it looks like a microburst (strong, straight-line winds) inflicted some damage in the area around the high school.
With continued chances at rain, we will continue to carry our Stage 1 Flood Alert into at least Saturday.
Before we jump into the forecast details, in case you missed it, Space City Weather now as an app available for both Android and Apple users! You can check out Dwight Silverman’s introductory post for more details. And please, if you notice any bugs or issues, shoot us an email at [email protected]. We’ve gotten lots of feedback so far, and we will do our best to address your reports in a timely manner! I just want to personally thank Dwight, Eric, and especially Hussain Abbasi for getting us here. It’s just a really good, clean, functional app, and I’m thrilled we can share it with you all.
Alright, let’s get into this somewhat tricky forecast.
Today
Radar this morning shows that most heavy rain has pushed offshore south and east of Houston. There are some scattered showers, including a few downpours in spots west of Houston.
Storms should get going again along the sea breeze this afternoon, as it pushes inland from the Gulf. There’s a certain degree of randomness to these things. Yesterday’s rain began on the sea breeze and then transitioned to a widespread steady but lighter rain as a disturbance coming out of central Texas intercepted the sea breeze boundary. Today may be more hit and miss, but risk for areas of heavy rain will continue. Atmospheric moisture remains fully loaded, but instability, which we need to really get things popping, looks to be down a bit today. Expect at least some rain and some pockets of heavier rain, but at this time, we don’t expect widespread heavy rain today. We will let you know if that expectation changes.
Tonight through Sunday
We supposedly enter the heart of this rainy period tonight and tomorrow as the upper low ejecting out of Central Texas meanders north and east past our area. As this happens, we may, for a time, maximize the ingredients necessary for periods of rain and storms, and this is where we will watch for more widespread heavy rainfall chances and more notable street flooding potentially. I say “supposedly,” because there’s been a shift in modeling today, which favors areas east of the Houston area, mostly in Louisiana for the heaviest rain risk. Upper lows are notoriously tough to forecast and little changes like this can lead to big expectation changes. We will keep you posted through the weekend.
So between tonight and Sunday, don’t expect it to rain the entire time, but there will be periods of showers, storms, and locally heavy rainfall. We think Saturday may have the highest chances for that to happen, with perhaps the worst of the action shifting out of our area by as early as Saturday afternoon and staying east of us Sunday. That doesn’t mean a dry weekend, but it does perhaps allow for more frequent breaks in the rain. Most outdoor plans this weekend will likely need to be either a true game time decision or postponed if you would rather not deal with the hassle.
Taking the glass half full approach (depending on your point of view, of course): We typically start to ramp up into summer heat around now, but there is absolutely no heat to be found thanks to the clouds and rain. Highs this weekend will generally be in the low-80s with lows in the 70s.
How much more rain? Between now and Sunday evening, we expect that most areas will see another inch or two on average.
Some places will almost certainly see more, while some other locales may see a bit less. Again, the Stage 1 Flood alert we have posted is meant to cover for those handful of locations that see mostly nuisance street flooding like we saw yesterday.
Next week
I fully expect more rounds of showers and thunderstorms to start next week. Monday and Tuesday look like they will have the highest odds of wet weather. But I don’t see a truly dry day area-wide before next Wednesday at the earliest.
Love the app, and the dew point indicator! Now I can remove my dew point calculation app! Great job and thanks again.
I downloaded the app and tried to turn on the “evacuate Katy” button on the notifications, but it didn’t work 🙂
Try it a few more times. 🙂
Thank you 🙂
Love the app! While I know that it’s not your job to be my personal travel meteorologist, I’m really struggling on the right thing to do. I’m supposed to load the kids in the car and drive to New Orleans right now for my grandmothers 99th, with a hard return date of Sunday! Feeling anxious about the drive and not sure if it’s stupid with the kids in the car. Would appreciate some wise advice!
I would not say that it’s stupid, but I would definitely use some caution. The trip back across Louisiana on Sunday might be a little dicey…but it also may be fine…the unfortunate reality of forecasting these types of things! I would just make sure to budget a good bit of extra time just in case you need to pull off somewhere for a couple hours or something. Always a tough decision to make.
We’ve had some serious rain over the last few weeks – is this historically typical? I don’t remember May being so wet in Houston?
It was (officially) our 11th wettest May on record in Houston. We can get into funks like this in May sometimes. I wouldn’t say it’s “typical,” but it also is not rare. It’s uncommon but not unprecedented.
PLEASE make the rain stop! We live on a horse farm in Alvin and it has rained consistently for the last 4 weeks! Our property is actually high–it never flooded in 1979 when Alvin got a record 43 inches in 24 hours, and it didn’t flood in Harvey, but we are a swamp now! It dried up a bit but yesterday’s rain put us right back where we were.
Just got the app. It’s great! Thank you!
Why the months of rain? I’m sure it’s just been weeks but…ya know. Was there a post recently that explained why we could be seattle?
Just got the App. Very slick. Thanks!