Matt Lanza

Brief pause in Houston’s late summer doldrums

Quick note: Many of you have reached out to us looking for book recommendations about weather. Well, we listened. Look for a post later this morning that has a handful of recommendations we hope you enjoy.

On to the weather. After some scattered showers and storms on Thursday, things will begin to calm down today, setting up a warm but pleasant weekend. A couple interesting notes about rainfall, courtesy of the NWS Houston office: First, officially, it’s the third wettest year on record (back to 1889) already for Houston. We only need 0.82″ of rain between now and New Year’s Eve to set a new record for wettest year in Houston. On the flip side, if Galveston manages to not receive 0.03″ of rain before tomorrow night, they’ll set a new record for driest September on record (back to 1872). It’s been a weird year.

Weekend

So we’ll keep mentioning a chance of a shower or thunderstorm today, but I think most of us will stay dry. Precipitable water, which is a good measure of how much moisture is available in the atmosphere, will drop off through the day today as we advect in drier air.

Simulated HRRR model radar today shows very little in the way of showers around Houston. The best chance is south and well west. (Weather Bell)

In English, that means chances of showers and thunderstorms should diminish today. It will not quite get to zero south of I-10, and I think the majority of us will stay dry. We’ll gradually usher in even drier air tonight, leading to comfortable dewpoints and low humidity on Saturday and completely shutting off rain chances. The weekend should be dry for the entire region.

Though the humidity will lower, the temperatures will stay relatively warm for the turn of the calendar to October, and we should see continued high temperatures in the upper 80s, with morning lows in the slightly more pleasant upper 60s.

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Houston’s kinda, sorta cool front on the way

As Eric described yesterday, this weekend’s front is not packing much punch with it. I mean, look, a break from the high humidity is definitely nice, but we would all probably prefer something more definitive by now. “Autumn” is fickle in Texas.

Today & Friday

More of the same is expected. Portions of south-central Texas have received over 10″ of rain this week, and there’s currently flooding on the Rio Grande near Laredo. We’ve been far enough east to really avoid most of it, and we’ll remain there again today. Just a smattering of hit or miss downpours should be expected today. It will probably be a bit more than the last two days with the front approaching. Otherwise it will be partly sunny and continued hot and humid.

The front should work through here either late today or early Friday. You probably won’t notice much of anything though until Friday night. So expect another warm to hot day Friday, with a good bit of humidity. Perhaps it won’t feel as oppressive as Thursday. We’ll continue with a very slight shower chance Friday before the drier air arrives Friday night.

Weekend

All in all, this weekend should be a decent one. We’ll certainly have lower humidity on Saturday. In fact, if you watch the animation below, you can see how the dewpoints start to drop off Friday night into Saturday morning. That will lead to a really nice, albeit still hot Saturday.

Lower humidity via lower dewpoints will arrive Friday night and Saturday morning. (Weather Bell)

Sunday will be similar, with a good deal of sunshine, but humidity staying under control. Both days will see high temperatures generally in the upper 80s (perhaps a couple degrees cooler north). Morning lows will bottom out in the upper 60s in Houston proper, but cooler in some of the suburbs. I don’t know if it will feel “refreshing” per se, but it will be nice for a change.

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Harvey’s other evil: Recapping an incredible Houston area tornado outbreak

During Hurricane Harvey, I think we did a good job making pretty clear that our focus was to be on flooding. And ultimately, the majority of the damage and devastation wrought by Harvey as it moved through our region came via water. But one of the most surprising and occasionally unsettling aspects about Harvey’s impacts on Southeast Texas were the tornadoes. The warnings came fast, they came furious, and a number of them were confirmed.

The fine folks over at U.S. Tornadoes put together a really nice summary of this event, which likely ranks Harvey close to or in the top ten for most prolific tornado-producing tropical systems in the United States.

The Houston National Weather Service forecast office issued over 150 warnings for tornadoes through the storm. During that hellacious Saturday night and Sunday morning, over 30 tornado warnings were issued, most of them overlapping with flash flood warnings. We strongly encouraged people to keep their phone alerts on that night because the frequency of tornadoes was almost shocking (and because of numerous videos of an actual tornado in northwest Harris County late that Saturday afternoon that sort of drove home the point). That, coupled with the flooding likely lead to a long, sleepless night for many in the area. I’ll have some comments about the phone alerting issue at the end of the post.

The early tornadoes

First, let’s recap some of the tornadoes that actually occurred. The NWS Houston office has confirmed nearly 30 tornadoes as of September 14th, all of them either EF-0 or EF-1 strength. Here’s a look at some of the tornadoes.

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Mostly quiet weekend for Houston

Good morning, and welcome to another Friday. Before we get into the forecast, I wanted to bring your attention to an event that was held yesterday at Rice University. “Flooding, water reuse and resource recovery: Trends and opportunities” was held at the Baker Institute at Rice. They were planning to discuss water use issues initially. But post-Harvey, they put together a good panel including Jeff Lindner, Harris County’s Flood Control meteorologist to discuss Harvey and some of the issues around flooding. I encourage you to watch the presentations, which can be accessed from the event web page. After the three presentations, there was a Q&A period. This is one of many conversations that will need to continue in the wake of Harvey.

One other quick note. I’ll have a long post later this morning that will recap the incredible tornado outbreak that accompanied Hurricane Harvey here in the Houston area. So far, the National Weather Service has confirmed 29 tornadoes in the Houston area. We’ll drill into some of the bigger ones and ones we have damage pictures from. Look for that around 10 AM.

On to the forecast…

Friday & Weekend

This weekend should be fairly straightforward. We should be dry once again today. We hit the low 90s on Thursday, and we’ll probably hit that or exceed it again today. Aside from the heat and humidity, it will be sunny.

For Saturday and Sunday, not a ton of change, but there will be some subtleties. Precipitable water values will edge upwards from just over an inch today and Saturday to around 1.5″ to 1.75″ on Sunday. Don’t worry, that is not abnormal for this time of year. It does mean that we should see at least a few showers and perhaps isolated thunderstorms around each afternoon, particularly on Sunday. Another don’t worry moment: The rains won’t be widespread, and they shouldn’t be too heavy either (and many areas will stay dry). But don’t be shocked or alarmed if you see some showers around this weekend.

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