Eric Berger

Good morning. If you’re tired of the heat already there’s one tiny bit of good news. The summer solstice occurred on Monday (at 5:34pm CT to be precise) so from here on out the days only get shorter, and the Sun doesn’t climb so high in the sky. Unfortunately for us living along the Gulf coast, temperatures lag considerably behind shorter days, so our warmest period does not come until late July and August.

TODAY

High pressure is building southward, but there’s enough moisture for some showers to develop later today, especially as the sea breeze moves in early this afternoon. Like on Monday the showers will be scattered, but could quickly drop 0.5 to 1.0 inch of rain over some areas. Much of Houston should remain partly sunny and hot, however, with highs in the low 90s. Rain chances end by or before sunset.

WEDNESDAY and THURSDAY

With high pressure in place for the middle of the week I expect mostly sunny skies, highs in the low- to mid-90s, and lows in the mid-70s. This will be classic, humid, summer-like weather for Houston.

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Good morning. Houston remains at the southern edge of a high pressure system, which should build over the metro region during the next couple of days. We’ll see some rain chances before that happens.

TODAY

I suspect rain chances later this afternoon will be similar to those on Sunday. While much of the area saw little or no rain, pockets of the city saw 0.5 to 1.0 inch of rain Sunday during primarily afternoon thunderstorms. Highs will likely climb into the low 90s.

This high pressure over the southeastern United States has kept a tropical system away from the Texas coast, and that’s probably a good thing. Tropical Storm Danielle formed in the southern Bay of Campeche this morning, but proximity to land is likely to prevent it from strengthening too much. Had it been allowed to move north toward the Texas coast, it would have had more time for development over open water. In any case, the system is going to be a rainmaker for Mexico, and is also notable as the earliest fourth tropical storm on record, beating Debby 2012 (June 23) and Dennis 2005 (July 5). It’s still not clear to me that this augurs a particularly bad overall hurricane season, because all the systems we’ve seen form have been fairly weak tropical storms.

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