Eric Berger

Good evening. We wanted to apprise you of the latest we have for the overnight forecast. Some storms remain to the west and north of Houston as of 6pm CT, but these should wind down during the next couple of hours. Unlike the previous two nights, as of now we do not anticipate any widespread showers or heavy rainfall on Thursday night or the wee hours of Friday morning.

However, the forecast models suggest a deeper area of moisture will push inland near Matagorda Bay or Galveston a couple of hours before sunrise on Friday, and this should bring some additional showers and thunderstorms into Houston throughout the morning. We don’t expect anything too extreme from these storms, with most people seeing 1-2 inches of rain at most.

Obviously we’ll have a better handle on Friday’s weather by tomorrow morning, when Matt provides you with an update. But I wanted to let you know that—knock on wood—most of tonight should be relatively sedate for the Houston area, weather wise. It would certainly make for a nice change. And yes, we hope we’re not eating these words tomorrow morning.

Good morning. Very heavy rains have fallen overnight along a nearly stationary boundary that is anchored across west Houston. As a result, as much as 5 to 7 inches of rainfall have come down near Katy and the Addicks and Barker reservoirs. A flash flood warning is in effect for these areas through 10 a.m. Thursday morning, and you can expect widespread street flooding.

Thursday

The heavy rainfall over the western part of the region should wane somewhat during the daytime hours. However, the overall pattern facing the region remains more or less the same. Very high atmospheric moisture levels coupled with an unstable atmosphere will continue to support heavy rainfall for the next day or two.

While we think there may be something of a break in storms today, another atmospheric disturbance should move into the area tonight, bringing another healthy chance of widespread showers and thunderstorms. It seems unlikely that any areas will see 7 inches more on Thursday night, but this pattern has already shown what it is capable of. Aside from rain chances today, mostly cloudy skies will limit highs in the mid-80s, with a light south wind.

Friday

By Friday the threat of heavy rainfall should be declining—although it is not going to go entirely away. The driver of this will be a slowly drying air mass that should help to set an upper limit on rainfall rates. Nevertheless, we still expect fairly widespread moderate showers and thunderstorms on Friday, with cloudy skies and highs in the mid-80s.

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Good morning. Houston’s wet pattern will continue through the work week, although the most organized heavy rainfall should wind down over the course of this morning after a storm system pushes through the area. Please take care if you have cause to be out and about this morning before conditions should improve later today.

Wednesday

Moisture continues to move in from the Gulf, combining with an upper-level storm system to bring heavy rains to the metro area on Wednesday morning. The heaviest rains are generally to the south of the city now, and this mess should slowly begin to slide generally eastward, exiting the area entirely by 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. In the meantime, these storms should put a manageable 1 to 3 inches of rain down for most of the metro area—with the heaviest rains coming and lingering near the coast.

Although this will end our Stage 1 flood event, the rain won’t be over. Even as the storm system rotates away from Houston, additional moisture will be pulled inland and more showers will likely develop this afternoon. We’re not sure about this, because the atmosphere should be somewhat stabilized after this morning. In any case, storms this afternoon should be less organized. Highs today will likely only reach the mid-80s with cloud cover and rain.

Thursday

Healthy rain chances continue on Thursday, with a higher likelihood of moderate-to-heavy rain along the coast where moisture levels should be highest. Accumulations should be less than on Wednesday, however. Temperatures should remain in the upper 80s for most with cloudy skies.

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Good afternoon. We’re continuing to monitor the threat of heavy rainfall during the overnight hours as a front sags into the Houston area, and stalls. And at this point, we believe this threat warrants a Stage 1 alert on the Space City Weather Flood Scale. However, we’re following the situation closely, and it may require an upgrade to Stage 2 this evening.

In anticipation of this threat, the National Weather Service has issued a flash flood watch for the entire metro Houston area, in effect from 7 p.m. tonight through 7 a.m. Wednesday morning. In terms of overall accumulations, they are forecasting widespread totals of two to four inches of rain through tomorrow morning, with isolated areas of six to eight inches possible. This is reasonable. However, these kinds of potentially heavy rainfall events, with a slow-moving system and very high levels of atmospheric moisture, are notoriously hard to predict.

At this time we do not have much confidence in where the rains will be heaviest—it could be anywhere from south of the city to the northeast. The good news is that we expect the storms to begin to clear the area by around sunrise, or shortly thereafter. By then the atmosphere will probably be pretty worked over, and we think storm coverage should be less during the daytime on Wednesday.