Eric Berger

Do pre-season tropical storms augur a busy year? No.

It’s not even June 1 and the Atlantic basin has already recorded two tropical systems in 2016—Hurricane Alex back in January, and Tropical Storm Bonnie last weekend. Some readers might be concerned that this augurs a particularly busy hurricane season, which officially begins Tuesday, but that is not necessarily the case.

That’s because there is little to no correlation between seasons with at least one tropical cyclone (tropical depression, tropical storm, or a hurricane) prior to June 1 in a calendar year, and that season’s overall activity. The following chart, with data since 1950, was recently shared by The Weather Channel’s Michael Lowry.

(Michael Lowry/The Weather Channel)
(Michael Lowry/The Weather Channel)

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After record river flooding, more heavy rains later this week

Good morning to you after a fine Memorial Day weekend, when we rememberd those who died serving our country. We are all indebted to all of them. Today I’m going to take a final look at last week’s flooding, and what lies ahead.

FLOODS

As Braniff explained this weekend, Houston saw two days of large mesoscale convective systems (MCS) that were driven by backbuilding storms. On Thursday the heaviest rains were concentrated over the Brenham area, and on Friday the region saw more widespread rainfall. Here’s a false-color satellite view of the hard-hit northwest part of the Houston metro region on Saturday afternoon that shows the dramatic swelling of the Brazos River, and flooded watersheds between Katy and Hockley. Click the image to enlarge.

Annotated landsat image from Saturday afternoon. (CIMSS)
Annotated landsat image from Saturday afternoon. (CIMSS)

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Storms firing up north of Houston again today, may sag southward

Most of the Houston area has remained shower-free this morning, but we’re becoming concerned about a boundary between warmer (to the south) and cooler air masses that has set up a bit to the north of Interstate 10 today. Its position at 11:45am CT is shown below.

Approximate position of boundary at 11:45am CT. (Intellicast)
Approximate position of boundary at 11:45am CT. (Intellicast)

We’ve seen storms form north of this boundary today, including over already hard-hit areas of southwestern Montgomery County, and this should continue. That’s because there’s an ample flow of moisture and warmth coming from the south-southwest which is helping to feed storm development. As the day progresses we could see this boundary sag further south, bringing some heavier storms into the central Houston metropolitan area.

There is a lot of uncertainty in the forecast, but even a few more inches of rain across northern Harris, southern Montgomery, Waller and Grimes county would prove very troubling. And the prospect of heavier rains moving southward into the central Harris County area later this afternoon to start off the Memorial Day weekend isn’t particularly appealing either. We’ll be keeping a close eye on developments for you.

Posted by Eric Berger at 11:55am CT on Friday

Tremendous storms hammer northwest Houston area, worst appears to be over

We’re nearing the end of an incredible rain event over the northwest and northern Houston metro area. A final line of major storms moved through the northern half of the metro area this morning, a little before sunrise, and now it seems like the organized activity is finally ramping down. Here’s a look at rainfall totals between 5am CT Thursday, and 5am CT Friday:

24-hour rain accumulations. (NOAA)
24-hour rain accumulations. (NOAA)

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