Eric Berger

Note: Today’s the last day of our fundraising campaign to support Space City Weather in 2017. You can help by buying a t-shirt, or making a donation. For businesses, we also have a handful of monthly sponsorship opportunities still available for the first half of the year. If you can help, Matt and I really appreciate it! Now, on to the forecast, and our looming encounter with Jack Frost.

Monday

The rain’s almost over, and most of us are probably good and ready for that. As previously noted, on Saturday Galveston set a record for daily rainfall with 7.68 inches, for any winter day, in any winter year, in more than a century of records. Texas City faced significant, widespread flooding. All told, here are the estimated accumulations for rainfall from Friday evening through Sunday for the Houston metro area.

 

As expected one final round of showers is moving through the metro area this morning, but the rainfall rates are low enough with the fast-moving storms for them to just be nuisance showers rather than threatening any kind of significant flooding in the Houston metro area. Expect the flash flood watch for Harris and the coastal counties to expire at noon CT today. As the upper-level low pressure system moves out of the Houston area today expect the rain showers to end as well, drying out from the southwest to the northeast. For today, the severe weather chances have moved off to the east, to the Gulf regions of Louisiana and Mississippi.

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After steady, light to moderate rain this morning and early afternoon across Houston, showers have ebbed across the region as we go toward evening. Fortunately today only brought an additional 0.5 to 2 inches for pretty much everyone, which was manageable even for the coastal areas hard hit on Saturday.

It seems likely we’ll remain mostly dry this evening, but there’s one more round of rainfall coming as low pressure lingers along the coast on Monday. Fortunately this event doesn’t look particularly extreme for Houston, with 1 to 2 inches of rain, maximum, likely falling between late Sunday night and late morning or early afternoon on Monday. So while your commute into the office may be soggy on Monday morning, I wouldn’t look for any significant flooding problems.

 

After the rains end Monday, look for a cool night down around 50 degrees, and then quite a pleasant day on Tuesday, with highs in the low 70s. Our next cold front remains on track for late Wednesday or so, and it will be a really strong one. I’ll have full details in Monday morning’s update.

Posted at 4:45pm CT on Sunday by Eric

Good morning. The greater Houston region experienced very heavy rains on Saturday, particularly along the coast. With 7.68 inches, officially, Galveston recorded its single wettest day during any winter month, on record. Just inland in Texas City conditions were more grave still, with as many as 11 inches of rain falling. Parts of Galveston Island, Tiki Island, and La Marque all experienced significant flooding, and a Red Cross shelter was established in League City at Bay Harbour UMC, 3459 Deke Slayton Highway, for affected residents.

After a relatively quiet Saturday night, storms began moving into the Houston region a couple of hours before sunrise on Sunday, setting the stage for another wet morning. Due to lower pressures offshore, moist Gulf air will continue to flow inland at the surface, and at the same time in the higher levels of the atmosphere there is a pronounced flow of moist air from the west. The net effect of this is a water vapor “highway” flowing into Texas from the southwest, up through the eastern half of Texas and along the coast.

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Grim, gray weather has persisted across the Houston metro area on Saturday, but by far the heaviest rains have developed along the coast, where as much as 10 inches of rain have fallen in the last 24 hours. The following map shows estimated satellite rainfall accumulations through the middle of Saturday afternoon:

 

Officially, at of 4:15pm CT, the city of Galveston has recorded 6.14 inches of rain on Saturday, and when the city reaches 6.31 inches it will surpass Dec. 17, 1995, as the wettest December day ever recorded on the island.

Rest of today

A flash flood watch remains in effect for the entire area through Sunday evening, but as we’ve seen the heaviest rains have set up along the coastal counties, that’s where the biggest concern lies. Accordingly a flash flood warning is in effect through 5:45pm CT on Saturday for northwestern Galveston, and northeastern Brazoria counties. Grounds there are now fully saturated.

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