Eric Berger

Tuesday offered a preview for what we can expect the rest of the work week in Houston—some sunshine, some clouds, and some scattered showers and thunderstorms. Where the heaviest storms set up, downpours will occur, but we don’t expect to see the longer-lived showers that affected Houston last week around the July 4th holiday.

Wednesday

Partly sunny skies, with highs in the low 90s. Rain chances will be best on the eastern half of the city, where conditions are slightly more favorable for storms to develop. Still, there’s probably only about a 20 to 30 percent chance you get wet today.

Thursday and Friday

The story is similar to end the work week, with highs in the low 90s, a mix of sunshine and clouds, and scattered showers across the area. Again, there’s nothing we need to be too concerned about, but you probably should be prepared for the possibility of brief, heavy showers.

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It has been a wet week for southeast Texas, from Houston over to Beaumont, with much of the area receiving 5 to 15 inches of rainfall. Although these rains have at times been a nuisance, they’ve generally been good for the area as we head into mid-July. Now, during the hottest part of the year, we start out with wet soils and a diminished chance of a drought developing. This is a good thing.

Tuesday

Atmospheric moisture levels are a bit lower, but there’s still enough around that we’re likely to see some scattered showers and thunderstorms this afternoon—and embedded within these we may well see some brief, heavier downpours. However, skies should be mostly sunny for the most part, with highs in the low 90s for Houston.

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As expected, Sunday saw a burst of heavier rain showers across the area, with a few parts southern and eastern parts of the region (such as League City) picking up 3 inches. Fortunately these heavier rains moved on, because in some cases the rainfall rates exceeded 5 inches/hour over 15-minute periods. We’ll see the potential for more of the same today before our weather pattern takes a turn toward drier (although still very humid) conditions.

Monday

Plenty of atmospheric moisture remains spread across the Houston area today, but there’s not as much impetus for it to rise in the atmosphere. For this reason, I think we’ll see the potential for heavy showers on Monday, but they probably won’t be quite so widespread as we saw on Sunday. Nevertheless, where strong storms do develop, they will certainly be capable of causing some temporary street flooding. For this reason, beginning around noon today, it’s probably best to check the radar before making a trip across town. Mostly cloudy skies should help keep daytime temperatures at 90 degrees, or just below.

Tuesday and Wednesday

Atmospheric moisture levels (presently at about the 99th percentile for this time of year) should fall beginning Tuesday. With less moisture to work with, and high pressure moving in from the north, we expect to see a gradually diminished rain chances beginning Tuesday and Wednesday—probably only a 30 to 40 percent chance of moderate showers. With sunnier skies, we can correspondingly expect highs to nudge back up into the steamy lower- or mid-90s.

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As expected, higher moisture levels are pushing into the Houston region from the Gulf of Mexico today. This will lead to storms across the area, possibly widespread, as temperatures warm into the 80s later this morning. This provides the potential for a quick pickup of 1 to 3 inches of rain for a few areas, and depending upon the rainfall rates we could see some temporary street flooding.

The bottom line is that if you plan to be out and about from around noon to 6pm, check the radar, and be weather-aware. We’re not expecting widespread problems, but you should definitely be prepared for storms to pop up quickly, and drop a lot of rain. Monday will probably be similar (although with less coverage) before rain chances begin to dial down significantly on Tuesday.