Eric Berger

Apologies if you could not care less about the marathon, which will take place on Sunday, Jan. 20, in downtown Houston and nearby roadways. However, for the tens of thousands of people who have trained over the last four months (yours truly, included) the weather for that morning is of profound importance. Anything too warm—for me that’s above 55 degrees—and it’s going to be a long, long day. After today’s post, I’ll append a short marathon outlook at the bottom of the daily updates.

Before jumping into the forecast, let me set some expectations. Until about 10 days before the race, we can’t have much confidence in the forecast. We can set some constraints, but not much more than that. From 7 to 10 days we can glean some better insight from the ensemble models, and then about a week out we can begin to have some confidence in the overall forecast. Alright, enough caveats!

For this week, we’re going to see a front later on Tuesday, and then another one in the Friday-Saturday timeframe (that one may yield 0.5 to 1.0 inch of rain). After this front, the first half of next week (Jan. 13 to 15) looks fairly cool, with highs in the 50s perhaps. Monday or Tuesday of next week would be ideal to run the marathon on. After this, it looks like we’ll see a warm-up by the middle of next week, with highs in the 70s perhaps.

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Good morning. It’s uncharacteristically warm for early January, but it appears that after Tuesday we’ll return to more seasonable weather for the mid-January period with highs generally in the 60s, and lows in the 40s or 50s. Rain chances return Friday, but there’s nothing too extreme in the forecast at all over at least the next week or 10 days. Also, if you’re interested in the Houston Marathon (which will take place on January 20), we’ll have our debut forecast later today.

Monday

High temperatures on Sunday reached the low 70s for most of the region, and they should again be that warm today, with slight southerly winds. Skies will be mostly cloudy, which should help put an upper limit on temperatures. As cloudy skies continue into tonight, we probably will only see lows down in the low 60s for most of Houston once again, and with the warmer air we could see some fog on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday

This will be another warm day, with highs under mostly cloudy skies likely reaching the low- to mid-70s. These warm and humid conditions will continue until later in the day, or early evening, as a cold front slides through Houston. Right now the dynamics with this front don’t appear to produce a significant chance of rain—maybe 10 or 20 percent for the region. Lows Tuesday night should generally fall into the 50s.

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Houston is coming to the end of wet spell, but we’re not quite across the finish line. Generally, 1.5 to 3.0 inches of rain have fallen over the last 24 hours, which is not that much rain but due to sodden soils and dormant vegetation, none of those rains have been absorbed. (Area bayous are fine, with the exception of some minor flooding along Little Cypress Creek). Fortunately the bulk of this mess has moved off to the east, and the rest of it should follow by around noon today. Good riddance!

Thursday

It’s chilly this morning in addition to the rainfall, with low 40s inland to mid-50s near the coast. As the upper-level storm system that produced our wet weather moves east, it will be replaced by high pressure later today that will bring drier air. Clouds probably will be breaking up around the time the sun sets. Highs today won’t move up much from lows this morning, and lows tonight may get into the upper 30s for the city.

Friday

After the cold start, sunny skies will help push temperatures into the upper 50s for most of the city, with light northerly winds. Lows Friday night will be a few degrees warmer than Thursday night, but still fairly cold.

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Houston got a taste of sunshine to start the new year, but now we’ve returned to cloudy weather. Soon, rain will follow, and due to the nature of our saturated soils and lesser ability of dead vegetation to absorb rainfall, a flash flood watch is in effect through noon Thursday. We’re not overly concerned with the possibility of widespread flooding, but certainly the next day or so will be a wet, chilly affair.

Wednesday through midday Thursday

A combination of moisture streaming into the area from the Gulf of Mexico (this is occurring above the surface, because winds near the ground are out of the northeast), as well as a disturbed atmosphere will drive the potential for rain today, tonight, and Thursday morning. While much of the rain will likely be of the light-to-moderate variety, a few embedded heavier showers are possible. Moreover, because the rain could last for hours in some locations, we may eventually see accumulations of up to about 3 inches. Because soils simply cannot handle much (any) of this rain, almost all it will run off into streets and bayous.

Overall, this messy weather should eventually move off to the east by Thursday morning, or early afternoon time frame, as a cold front moves through. Before then, highs will be in the 50s, lows in the 40s, and skies leaden. I know some of you love winter weather like this, so enjoy it while it lasts.

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