Happy Friday. It’s been a pretty nice week overall in Houston, and we have another couple nice days coming up. As Eric and I have been discussing, this nice weather has continued to march Texas into drought. November’s 0.50″ of rain in Houston ranks it as the fourth driest November on record for our city. And 90% of that rain fell on November 1st. Things have really just shut down post-Harvey, and we continue to see drought expanding, now evidenced around Houston on the weekly drought monitor report issued Thursday.
Updated Drought Monitor showing moderate drought increasing in coverage across Central Texas and the middle Texas coast. 35 percent of the state is now shown to be in some level of drought. Rainfall over the past 60 days has generally been below 50 percent of normal. pic.twitter.com/VPF533tGBR
So, yes, while it’s tough to really say it, we actually really do need rain now. And we should get at least a little of it Sunday.
Today & Saturday
Both days look stellar to kick off the weekend. Expect sunshine both today and tomorrow with daytime highs in the low to mid-70s on average, with nighttime lows in the mid-50s tonight and upper-50s to around 60° on Saturday night. I wouldn’t rule out some patchy fog Saturday morning, especially south and east of Houston.
Welcome to our week in review of news and stories about Harvey recovery and flooding issues you may have missed over the last few days. If you weren’t able to check out last week’s edition, you can find it here. Feel free to share any links we may have missed in the comments. On to the news.
We may never know precisely how much damage Harvey did to Houston neighborhoods. (Texas National Guard)
Displaced by storm still yearn for home (Houston Chronicle): 47,000 flood victims are still displaced in hotels all over the country. The housing aspect of the recovery usually moves slowly, and in a post-Harvey world, it’s no different.
As part of our commitment to helping the community recover from Hurricane Harvey, we thought it would be helpful to write a “week in review” post every Monday. In the post-Harvey world, there has been no shortage of news about recovery, future projects, and ramifications of all that happened during the storm. This weekly post, largely produced by Matt, attempts to summarize the major news of the week, without editorializing. Please feel free to share anything we missed in the comments, or suggest additions for next week’s post.
November 20th’s Bloomberg Businessweek talks about some of the Energy Corridor’s experiences during Harvey. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
Harvey Recovery
Repairs to Harvey-damaged San Jac bridge to start early 2018 (Houston Chronicle): TxDOT has a lot to consider after Harvey, including elevating roads. Meanwhile, work to repair the US-59/I-69 bridge over the San Jacinto River, which was heavily damaged by the flooding will begin after Christmas. Some of the repair work could be quite substantial.
Houston area groups propose plan for how third Hurricane Harvey relief package should be distributed (Community Impact News): The U.S. House will soon pass a third aid package for Harvey relief. Governor Abbott has asked for over $61 billion in funding for various flood control projects and buyouts in addition to recovery. Much of that request is based on the Rebuild Texas plan. Another group has advocated for more comprehensive flood control the rest of Harris County. You can read about some of the differences between Rebuild Texas and this Better Houston plan in the article.
We’ve had several cold fronts pass through Houston this autumn. Very few of them have carried much punch as they passed through. Tomorrow’s front will behave similarly. As a result, precipitation (outside of a few exceptions) has been pretty minimal this fall. We finished September nearly three inches below normal officially at Bush Airport. October finished a bit over two inches below normal. And through the first half of November, we’re running just under two inches below normal.
Over the last 60 days, rainfall has averaged about 50-75% of normal in most of Southeast Texas. (NOAA)
In fact, much of Texas has been dry. And yes, we can start using the “D” word a bit more liberally in Texas. That word is drought. With precipitation over the next two weeks likely to average below normal in most of Texas, and with drought areas expanding, we’re likely to see talk of drought show up a bit more often.
Following on from yesterday, latest Drought Monitor update has TX up to 15.3% moderate+ drought from 8.8% a week ago, mostly in N & C/W Texas. #txwxpic.twitter.com/k8NV8sau4G
Harvey obviously delivered enough rain to hold drought back in our area for a good while. But with Harvey becoming a distant memory in the water system, and Texas’s historical reputation of going from one extreme to the other, we can start discussing this potential. Areas in interior Texas less impacted by Harvey are already there.
So with that setup, let’s dive into the forecast.
Today
There’s not much in the way of fog to start today, thanks in part to more cloud cover. So expect a pretty benign Friday: Clouds and some sun. We’ll warm up into the low 80s in most spots this afternoon away from the coast.
