Welcome to the weekend, everyone. We’ll be updating the site both on Saturday and Sunday out of an abundance of caution, rather than because we’re particularly concerned about the potential for flooding this weekend. The overall story remains the same: heavy rain potential increases on Sunday and Monday, with the biggest threat some localized high rainfall rates. As Houston floods go, this is not likely to be a memorable one.
Average of rainfall forecasts from the European ensemble model for now through Tuesday. (Weather Bell)
Saturday
The weekend will start out mostly sunny, with a high in the low 90s on Saturday. Rain chances should increase later today, with 30 to 50 percent chances near the coast, and lower chances inland. Because moisture levels won’t spike until Sunday, we don’t anticipate any concerns from heavy rains. If you have outdoor plans today, I’d press ahead.
Please allow me a few words of reflection this morning before we get to the forecast. (It really hasn’t changed much—2 to 4 inches of rain for much of the area, with the potential for greater amounts possible in some locations. We have some concerns, which we discuss below, but don’t anticipate major, widespread problems at this time).
Amazingly we have been talking about the rainfall for “this coming weekend” for nearly a full week. This began late on the afternoon of Friday, June 8, when a couple of local forecasters looked at the GFS operational model (re-posted below) and called attention to the fact that it showed a hurricane moving into Texas on Sunday, June 17. I was taking a family vacation at the time, but received several messages from readers concerned about this, so I asked Matt to write about it. He authored an excellent update titled, “Yes, we saw the Friday PM GFS model; we aren’t stressing.” This kind of perspective is precisely why we started this site.
The GFS model run last Friday showed a hurricane hitting Texas this Sunday. Oh noes! (Tropical Tidbits)
What concerns me is that we have now been writing about this event for a week, and there is a non-trivial chance that for much of Houston this will not be more than a few significant thunderstorms. This sort of rainfall does not warrant the amount of attention it has received. And if Houston does receive the 2-4 inches of rain over a few days that we anticipate, it will degrade public confidence in meteorology as the hype will not match reality—i.e. the boy who cried wolf. I understand that people are highly sensitized after Hurricane Harvey, but every storm is not Harvey (or even close). So I just wanted to reiterate what I wrote at the outset of hurricane season: “Social mediarology” plays on the fears of people, and therefore tends to get shared widely. If you’ll promise to not fall for these kinds of fear-mongering posts, we’ll make a pledge to you: If we believe there is a credible threat to Houston, we will report that immediately. And if we haven’t written about it, the post you’ve seen on Facebook is probably garbage. Fortunately we have a sponsor like Reliant, which doesn’t value clicks, but rather reliability. Now, on to the forecast.
Cooler and significantly wetter weather remains on tap for the weekend—at this point Sunday looks like the wettest day—but with a disorganized tropical system moving into Mexico we don’t see any signal yet for widespread, significant flooding. So we’re watchful, but not overly concerned at this point. If you’ve been following along with Matt’s updates this week, you pretty much know what to expect.
Thursday and Friday
Houston endured highs of 97 degrees on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, and that trend should pretty much continue to end the work week. Warm days will be punctuated with isolated to scattered showers, some of which can be intense as we saw with some storms near Tomball on Wednesday evening. But for the most part, conditions will just be hot and partly to mostly sunny.
Tropical disturbance
We continue to think the tropical disturbance now moving over the Yucatan Peninsula, which will move westward into the Bay of Campeche and likely into northern Mexico, will not develop. That means that the primary threat from the system remains tropical moisture, which should spread into Texas this weekend.
The National Hurricane Center gives the tropical disturbance a 0 percent chance of developing during the next 2 days, and a 10 percent chance the next 5 days. (National Hurricane Center)
The key question is where the greatest amount of moisture will surge inland, and unfortunately we can’t say this with any precision. Will it be Houston? Beaumont? Victoria? We just can’t tell you yet. With that in mind, here’s our best stab at forecast conditions for this weekend.
Hot and humid weather will continue for awhile across the region. We won’t see anything too extreme heat wise, but temperatures remain a few degrees above normal for this time of year. We’re also continuing to watch for a pattern change later next week that may cool us down ever so slightly and could bring wetter conditions to the area.
For now, however, the forecast is pretty dull.
As of Thursday morning, lows aren’t too extreme yet over the southeastern Texas, but wait a month or two. (Weather Bell)
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
With Houston on the periphery of high pressure, our weather is more or less locked in with temperatures in the low- to mid-90s, partly to mostly sunny skies, and perhaps a few isolated showers during the afternoon and evening hours. Nights will remain warm, in the mid-70s.
