Alas, we’re facing another wet weekend in Houston

We think next weekend at the end of the month probably looks fairly nice, if that front we mentioned in Tuesday’s post comes to pass. Unfortunately, this immediate weekend doesn’t look great. And by not great, we mean a healthy chance of rain showers with the possibility of locally heavy rainfall.

Houston has generally been dry since Saturday, with partly to mostly sunny skies this week for much of the area. This has been due to high pressure overhead, which has kept some of the Gulf of Mexico moisture at bay, and prevented it from rising into the atmosphere, condensing, forming clouds and—you guessed it—producing rain showers. After today, however, this high pressure will begin sliding to the east.

The net effect of this will be to increase moisture levels to above normals, essentially opening up an atmospheric river streaming in from the Gulf of Mexico into the Texas coast. This, combined with some anticipated disturbances in the upper-atmosphere, will once again allow for the development of rain showers.

We don’t have a signal for anything too extreme right now, but rainfall should be widespread enough, and perhaps intermittently heavy, to put a damper on outdoor activities during the Friday through Sunday period.

Wednesday

Before the rain chances increase, we’re going to see another warm and mostly sunny day. I don’t think we’ll quite reach the 97 degrees we saw on Tuesday, but a lot of the region probably will get into the mid-90s.

Thursday

I think we’ll see some isolated to scattered showers and thunderstorms, but these should mostly develop during the day. With partly sunny skies, we should still see high temperatures climbing up to around 90 degrees.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

This is when the aforementioned river of moisture opens up and starts flowing into the Houston region. I don’t think this pattern will bring anything that could drive more than some isolated street flooding, with most of the region picking up 1 to 2 inches of rainfall. Showers could come both during the daytime and overnight hours. Fortunately, the area has had several good, dry, and hot days to drain after the very wet start to September. The upside to this weekend’s rain and clouds is that highs probably will top out in the upper 80s.

Next week

We’re going to fall into a typical late-summer pattern next week, with highs in the upper 80s to 90 degrees, partly sunny skies, and 30 to 50 percent rain chances (mostly in the daytime hours). None of these rains look too threatening, but we’ll certainly remain on the humid side. We’re still hoping for a cool front by Friday (very roughly) of next week, which will have a modest effect on temperatures but should bring some considerably drier air into the region. We can’t yet guarantee the front, but confidence is growing that we’ll see some kind of welcome pattern change.