Eric Berger

Good morning. Another round of surprisingly nasty showers popped up on Monday—I know because about 2.5 inches fell in short order right on top of my home—but we should be done with that for awhile. We should remain in a more or less late summer pattern for the next 10 days or so, after which time we can probably reasonably expect a cold front to be near at hand. We also discuss the tropics today, which you really should not be worrying about.

Tuesday

Today should be hot and sunny. With high pressure building from the east and a drying atmosphere, rain chances should fall back to near zero. Highs will be around 90 degrees, with lows tonight in the low 70s. It’s not fall, certainly, but at least it’s not the dead of summer.

Wednesday and Thursday

These days should bring more of the same, with only very slight rain chances and mostly sunny skies. Again, expect high temperatures of around 90 degrees with good drying-out weather for the region.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

The high pressure ridge that will bring hot and sunny weather this week will back off some heading into the weekend, opening up the region to somewhat more moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. By no means are we looking at a washout—however each day will likely carry 30 to 40 percent chances for showers and thunderstorms. Overall accumulations will likely run under one-half inch for most, and the days will likely be partly to mostly sunny. Highs, of course, will remain around 90 degrees.

See full post

Today marks the autumnal equinox, which means it is the first day of fall. But Houston has felt anything like fall so far this September, as low temperatures have rarely fallen below 75 degrees. The city has yet to see its first real fall cool front—which for the purposes of Houston we define as a daily minimum of 65 degrees or cooler. As you can see on the chart below, the first fall front typically comes around September 16th, or one week ago. The bad news is that there is no front on Houston’s horizon for the next week or so, but the good news that I don’t think we’ll quite break 2005’s record, and have to wait all the way until October 7th. More below.

Monday

On Sunday, some nasty but very localized storms developed in northwest Houston along Cypress Creek near the Willowbrook area. We’re going to see the potential for similar storms today, although there should be a bit more south-to-north motion as moisture streams in from the Gulf of Mexico. Overall rain chances are about 50 percent, and while accumulations for most will be under one-half inch, we can’t rule out some isolated thunderstorms bringing a quick 1 to 2 inches of rain. High temperatures should be near 90 degrees.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday

As high pressure extends its reach over the Houston area, we should see rain chances drop back to around 10 to 20 percent for each of the mid-week days. Accordingly, we should see high temperatures around 90 degrees, with overnight lows in the low- to mid-70s. Mostly sunny skies should really help the area dry out after Tropical Storm Imelda’s nastiness.

See full post

As anticipated, the greater Houston area radar has quieted down considerably with the loss of daytime heating. And thank goodness for that.

During the overnight hours we can’t rule out development of additional showers and thunderstorms, but we’d expect these to be fairly scattered and are not particularly concerned about additional, prolonged heavy rain. We just do not anticipate anything too organized getting going—although Lord knows Imelda has surprised us. Rain chances are probably a little higher to the east of Interstate 45 tonight, but again we don’t expect accumulations to be more than about a quarter of an inch where rain does fall.

We are well beyond the worst of Imelda, but we’re likely to see a decent chance of scattered storms on Friday, with chances diminishing further into the weekend. We should see mostly sunny days with highs in the upper 80s on Saturday and Sunday, which sounds pretty darn nice after all we’ve been through. Matt will have a comprehensive update in the morning.

Good afternoon, everyone. Before jumping into the forecast, I just wanted to provide some perspective. Since the National Hurricane Center began naming Atlantic storms in 1950, just two tropical storms have had their names retired: Allison, in 2001; and Erika in 2015. Soon we will have three, with Imelda.

Many readers will certainly remember Allison. It made me want to become a meteorologist. Tropical Storm Erika was a prodigious rainmaker that killed 31 people in Dominica and Haiti. There will be time over the coming days to put Imelda into historical perspective. But here are a few quick thoughts:

• For parts of Golden Triangle, the rain intensity and impacts were worse than Hurricane Harvey, which is staggering.
• For that region, Imelda is overall worse than Tropical Storm Allison was for Houston.
• And in Houston, this Allison-lite. The heaviest rains (25″+) so far have been in relatively rural parts of Montgomery County. Amazingly, there are locations in Harris County under 1 inch for the entire storm.

Thursday evening

You don’t need a meterologist to tell you that the incredibly productive rainfall band that began this morning in Montgomery and Liberty counties has sagged southward, soaked Harris County, and is now mercifully now moved toward the exits. It should (mostly) continue to push slowly out of Fort Bend, Brazoria, and Galveston counties between now and sunset.

The atmosphere over Houston is pretty worked over. We should generally see diminishing storm coverage heading into sunset, and later this evening although we can’t rule out the re-development of some showers and thunderstorms. For the Houston metro area, we feel pretty good about not seeing another super-organized band of storms like we saw today—or anything approaching it. Areas far north of Houston, and we’re thinking more Walker and San Jacinto counties than Montgomery and Liberty counties, could see some more organized development later tonight.

Friday

Scattered showers will be possible Friday, but these generally should pop up, move through, and be done. They could exacerbate flooding in some areas, but their transience means they should not cause significant problems in and of themselves. Conditions continue to improve over the weekend.

Alas the damage is done. Anyone traveling today likely had a rough go of things. If you can stay home this evening, please do so. The roads should generally improve for tomorrow morning, but that assumes the forecast behaves tonight. If you experienced flood damage today, I am so sorry. Imelda has sucked and needs to move on.

Note: The site will go down for 10-15 minutes at about 6pm CT Thursday to ensure another outage like Wednesday night does not occur.