Eric Berger

We’re almost there, Houston. Just one more round of showers and heavy rain today, and then we can put the several five days of intermittent heavy rainfall and storms behind us. Fortunately, in comparison to our recent weather, today’s storms do not look too serious beyond their potential to disrupt outdoor activities—and I know there are plenty planned as we’ve been asked about weddings, baseball games, camp-outs and more.

Showers and thunderstorms today will be driven by a disturbance moving up the Texas coast, combined with an extremely moist atmosphere. The best chance for storms today will occur south and east of I-69, near the coast. (Under some scenarios, the heaviest rainfall occurs near Galveston Bay, and under others, it occurs offshore). Generally, I think inland areas—those on the north and west side of I-69 will probably see about 1 inch of rain or less today, while people closer to the coast will see 1-2 inches. Isolated amounts of 3 inches or higher are, unfortunately, possible. The good news is that rainfall rates appear to be more restrained today, so we don’t anticipate any of the crazy 3+ inches per hour we saw over the last four days, which rapidly flooded streets.

Storms will likely develop between 10am and noon across Houston, with a general west to east motion that pushes them out of the metro area between 3pm and 7pm. Good riddance!

After this mess moves out, we should see clearing skies tonight, with rather pleasant weather for Sunday and Monday, with highs in the low 80s and overnight lows in the 60s. It will almost be nice enough for you to forget that June is only a couple of weeks away.

After an ugly round of storms moved through Houston on Thursday night and Friday morning, the region has seen some general clearing today. This is good because several waterways, including Clear Creek in the southeastern part of the metro area, crested above their banks this morning and need some time to recede. Alas, this multi-day rainfall event is not quite over.

Based upon the stability of the atmosphere, we can reasonably expect a mostly quiet evening and probably most of Friday night before storms return to the region on Saturday. There’s not a ton of agreement among the models, but generally we think most of the action will probably be between I-69 and the coast, over Brazoria, southeastern Harris, and Galveston, Chambers, and Liberty counties. (Our concern is that this is where the aforementioned Clear Creek lies). For most of this area, beginning around sunrise or a few hours later, we expect perhaps 1 to 3 inches of rain. That’s not overly concerning, but we can’t rule out a few isolated areas with 4 to 5 inches. For central and northern parts of the region, we expect lesser amounts of rainfall, with perhaps 0.5 to 2 inches of rain. The good news is that none of the forecast models are predicting some of the extreme, 3+ inches per hour rates we’ve seen earlier this week that rapidly led to street flooding.

We will see some thunderstorms with Saturday’s rainfall, but at this time we do not anticipate the kinds of widespread, severe thunderstorms, with hail and rampaging winds, that the region experienced Thursday night. And the storms should mostly develop after sunrise, so hopefully we can all get a good night’s sleep for a change.

Depending on which model you choose, rains should end from west to east, sometime between noon and early Saturday evening. We still expect drier air, with lower dewpoints and sunshine on Sunday, all of which should help begin to dry out the area.

We have seen very heavy rainfall develop along and northwest of Interstate 69 this evening. Areas near the Addicks and Barker reservoirs have been especially hard hit, some of which have received 5 inches of rain since 6-9pm. Water levels in the reservoirs are rising, but still well below flood level as of 8:45pm CT. With flood warnings issued, and street flooding occurring across much of west, northwest, and north Houston this evening, travel should cease for the night. It is time to hunker down.

As for the rest of the night, we expect this mass of rains to the northwest of I-69 to hold together until around 10pm or 11pm, after which time it should begin to sag slowly to the southeast. After this time we expect most of the action to occur more close to the coast, on the southeastern side of I-69. In addition to this sagging mass of showers, another complex of storms will move up from South Texas, likely reinforcing the already existing coastal showers.

Given the totals we’ve seen so far, widespread totals of 4 to 8 inches seem possible for areas northwest of Houston tonight, with higher isolated totals. Elsewhere, totals are likely to be closer to 1 to 4 inches of rain, with isolated areas of 8 inches possible later tonight.

In addition to the heavy rains, we are seeing reports of hail, up to 2 inches in diameter, across much of the area. This will continue for the next couple of hours, and we may also see the potential for damaging straight-line winds later tonight. An unpleasant night, for sure.

Storms will eventually exit to the east, with rains likely ending across the area from 6 to 10am on Friday morning, from west to east. Then we can probably expect another wet night Friday night, although hopefully not as extreme.

In this morning’s post, I wrote that there was the “potential” for storms and heavy rainfall today, but we didn’t have any confidence in whether it would materialize or not. Fortunately, so far the storms have not materialized.

Our biggest concern today has been a broad line of showers and thunderstorms moving eastward across central Texas today, associated with a cold front. High resolution modeling suggested this line would weaken as it approached the Houston area, and in fact that is what has happened, which is good for Houston. See the comparison below of radar images from earlier this afternoon.

As this broken line of showers and thunderstorms moves into the Houston area this afternoon and evening, the most likely outcome is that the system does not get too organized over the city. The best chance of storms will probably come to the north and east of Bush Intercontinental Airport, and the good news is that the storms seem to be holding a fairly steady eastward motion which should help to limit storm totals. As a result I think most of the area will probably see less than 0.5 inches of rain later today and tonight, with a few unfortunate pockets perhaps picking up a quick 1 to 3 inches.

We expect a fairly calm start to Thursday, before more showers later Thursday into Friday morning, and then yet another round from Friday night into Saturday morning. We’ll have full coverage of that tomorrow morning.