In brief: Houston gets to bathe in near-80° weather today before a cold front tonight sends us back to autumn and early winter with the coldest air of the season so far arriving. A light freeze is possible north and west of the city on Tuesday night and Wednesday night before we bring back rain chances and warm up this weekend.
Today
After a dreary weekend, especially Sunday, we will start the week on a bit of a nicer note. Look for some sunshine today mixed up with cloud cover. Let’s call it “decreasing clouds.” We don’t expect any rain, but what we do expect is warmth. Warm air getting pumped in from the southwest will allow our high temperature today to flirt with 80 degrees! This will be a few degrees shy of the 85° record from 2021. Still, for the warm weather lovers, enjoy. It changes again tomorrow.
Tuesday through Thursday
A cold front is going to push through the region tonight, ushering in a much colder air mass for Tuesday. Despite sunshine, morning lows in the 40s and 50s will be sluggish to warm up on increasing northwest winds Tuesday afternoon. We’ll manage 60 or the low-60s at best. Then, the coldest mornings of the season so far will follow on Wednesday and Thursday. We should see lows in the 30s in the city, near freezing in some of the northern and western suburbs, and at or below freezing just north and west of there.
Wind gusts on Tuesday evening will be 25 to 35 mph, strongest at the coast. We should see sunshine and highs in the 50s or around 60 degrees on Wednesday. Thursday will probably see increasing clouds with morning lows similar to Wednesday morning and afternoon highs in the low to mid-60s.
Friday and the weekend
Warmer temps will try to work back into the region Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with highs approaching the 70s again. Morning lows will step up into the 40s and then 50s, if not low-60s this weekend as well. Unfortunately, it’s looking a bit dreary again. Despite the off and on rain this weekend, almost all the area saw merely a quarter to half-inch of rain. So it was not a lot. This coming weekend could see even a bit less than that. So for now, let’s open the bidding at a quarter-inch or so on average this weekend, especially given how recent rains seem to have underperformed. We’ll fine tune things as we get closer.
Our next meaningful cold front looks to arrive sometime midweek or late week next week. We are still a couple of days away from having a solid indication on Christmas weather, so let’s wildly speculate instead. With colder weather late next week, we could see a warming trend leading into the holiday but exactly how warm is TBD. More to come.
Enjoy the heat today folks. And enjoy the dismal rains that totally under performed last week and weekend…for another dismal amount coming this weekend.
The forecasted rain totals for my area last week was between 5 and 6 inches.
What I actually got: 0.60
Didn’t even bother to look at gauge this morning, will check at lunch. Had only 0.12” for yesterday morning. Total, absolutely, cataclysmic, model failure. Have to go back to now casting like the old days and base everything after the fact
I always expect Christmas to be warm by default because over the past 10 years it has been warm on Christmas more often than cold. And with a warming climate the dice tends to land on warm outcomes much more often regardless of season. So knowing what is most likely to happen helps me not be so disappointed, but I will admit that I do miss they days of having actual winters that stayed cool consistently without weeks of humid 70s and 80s through the majority of the winter season.
That may be true on average, but I remember Christmas 2022 was brutally cold. It was my first winter living in an RV and I didn’t refill with propane before Christmas. There’s nowhere to go on Christmas night if your furnace runs out of fuel, really.
Oh boy, here we go again. Get ready for highs in the 80s with lows in the 70s through the entire 2nd half of December. For a second I almost believed that we were actually going to stay cool consistently this December. I should have known better with today’s climate system. 🤦♂️🤦♂️
69 now at 1:18 and a cold wind blowing, if it’s going to get to the highs forecast, it had better hurry up.
70 now at 1:32 up here in Magnolia, and for us, there is not a cold wind blowing … just now finished another 4 mile walk.
Early this morning, yea, there was an approx 3-4 mph wind from SW, but wasn’t cold (or cool).
Made it to 80.2 down here in Sienna at about 3:00 pm. Still over 70 at 6:30 pm and muggy as Hell……
Why don’t I see the comments anymore? IOS 18/Chrome
Trey Harris … you just commented (comment #6), so you must be able to see them 🙂
No, I couldn’t see the comments, I could only see “Submit a Comment” which I did.
Then after the submission was complete I refeshed the page and then I could see comments.
I’ve been having that same issue on my phone. I have the Galaxy S23. Lately there has been a long delay with the comment updates on my phone where it is taking over 3 hours for my comments to show up but it works just fine on my laptop. Weird
No, I couldn’t see the comments, I could only see “Submit a Comment” which I did.
Then after the submission was complete I refeshed the page and then I could see comments.
It was down for me this morning too, finally popped up around 12:30ish for me.
Received a whopping 0.24” over the weekend. Drought is on.
Wondering where this sun is that was projected?? 71° here in NW Houston, 8 miles SW of IAH…zero sun. I’ll start listening to my old bones for the weather forecast 🤦♂️
Is it just me, or did today not get nearly as warm as forecast? Maybe it’s just ’cause I’m in Magnolia, but I don’t think we got above 72F today. I got in a nice bike ride, though.
“but I don’t think we got above 72F today”.
You’re complaining? We are also in the Magnolia area … 71-72 is way more than adequate for today in Dec.
Just wait ’til it drops into the 30’s in a couple days – then complain 🙂
I intended to ride, but just didn’t happen. Maybe later in the week when the cold wind is not chilling me to the bones. I won’t ride unless I can get at least 60 miles in. Not worth getting the bike out for less than that.