Eric Berger

It’s a gorgeous morning across Houston, with lows generally in the mid-50s to low 60s. It feels wonderful, and we’ve got more of the same to come as high pressure builds over the region in the wake of Monday’s cold front.

TODAY

Words cannot really describe how wonderful today will feel. It’s probably the last, most spring-like day of the year until at least October. Partly to mostly cloudy skies this morning should give way to partly to mostly sunny skies this afternoon. Highs should only climb into the mid-70s. Temperatures will fall quickly into the 60s after sunset.

WEDNESDAY

Like highs on Tuesday, Wednesday morning will probably be our coolest morning until October as well. I could see temperatures falling into the upper 40s for some parts of Montgomery County, whereas most of the central and southern Houston area will be in the mid- to upper-50s.

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Good morning. For part of the Houston area it’s been a stormy night, from Conroe northward late Sunday night, and from Pearland southward to Galveston early this morning (a coastal flood advisory is in effect until 11am CT). More than 2 inches of rain have fallen on the island during the overnight hours. Fortunately for most of Harris County, including the western parts of the metro region, we’ve seen scant rain during the overnight hours.

 

TODAY

Change is on the way. For the rest of the morning, with a moist airmass in place, we’ll see the continued threat of showers and thunderstorms across the area. However a merciful cold front should finally move through later today, and we should see an end to the heavy rain threat by around noon or shortly thereafter. Between sunrise and around noon there isn’t the potential for more than some minor street flooding to occur in Houston, and since the showers have generally remained to the south and north of the city of Houston, we can probably expect that trend to continue. The bottom line: This moist airmass is departing soon.

As our reward for all of this we’re about to see some glorious weather.

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I wanted to take a few minutes this morning to explain what happened with our forecasts for potentially very heavy rain on Friday night and Saturday, why we made the decisions we did, and then talk about what’s ahead for Houston in what will remain a wet pattern for a few more days.

FRIDAY’S MISS

For a couple of days Matt and I have been talking about the potential for very heavy rain in Houston this weekend, especially Friday night and Saturday morning. We weren’t alone, of course. The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch. A lot of people were concerned. But I can only speak for our forecasts.

By early Friday afternoon we were pretty concerned, and wrote so here. Several high resolution forecast models were showing the potential for very heavy rains and severe storms later that evening and during the overnight hours.

These model forecasts were predicated on a capping inversion, an area of warmer air above the surface that prevents surface moisture from rising, breaking down. This didn’t seem like an unreasonable expectation, but unfortunately we don’t have good, timely data on the “cap.” The best information we have comes from “soundings,” essentially weather balloons sent into the upper atmosphere twice a day. But there are no Houston soundings. For Houston, the closest sounding locations are in Lake Charles, La. and Corpus Christi. A 7pm CT sounding from Lake Charles showed there was a stronger cap in place than the models were predicting.

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