Matt Lanza

We’ll begin today with the tropics. Colorado State University released their annual April hurricane season forecast yesterday. It was pretty impressive. They call for 23 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes. This is the most active April forecast that they’ve released. This is another signal ahead of the upcoming season that suggests a very busy summer awaits us. I wrote all about the forecast and what you should take from it over at The Eyewall. Busy forecast don’t always translate into busy forecasts for Houston. However, we encourage you to prepare this season, as you should each season.

Today

We’ve got one more spectacular day with low humidity. We’ll warm from the 50s and low-60s this morning well into the 80s this afternoon. It’ll be warm for sure!

But the humidity will be tolerable. Lots of sun means ozone production, so, yes air quality will be an issue this morning and late this afternoon.

Weekend

We will trade off a couple degrees tomorrow for higher humidity. We’ll also begin to add back some more clouds. Look for highs in the lower half of the 80s after morning lows in the 60s. Expect similar temperatures on Sunday but with more humidity and a slightly warmer morning.

On Sunday, the cold front that will play a role in the eclipse forecast will approach from the west. It should push through the Brazos Valley, and it may even get as far south and east as Brookshire, Cypress, or The Woodlands. From there, it slams on the brakes and throws things into reverse, moving back to our north and west, reaching back to I-35 by Monday morning. Besides clouds, there will probably be at least a few showers in the area Sunday as this front maneuvers.

Monday & solar eclipse outlook

As far as Monday’s eclipse goes, we don’t have any real positive news to share today unfortunately. Here in Houston, we have maybe a 10 to 15 percent chance that skies will be clear enough for good viewing. Those odds may be even lower for Austin and San Antonio.

If you absolutely want to chase this thing in Texas, your best bets may be Texarkana or Dallas, where there’s currently about a 30 to 40 percent chance that skies will be favorable. Still not great, but better than much of the rest of the state. Do keep in mind that North Texas is highlighted for potential severe thunderstorms on Monday, however. If you are able to road trip, southeast Missouri or southern Illinois look favorable on Monday. If time, money, and logistics are no object, northern New England or New Brunswick and Quebec in Canada are your best bets.

Weather-wise, locally expect plentiful clouds and isolated to scattered showers Monday. A thunderstorm or two will be possible in the afternoon, especially north of Houston. Highs should be in the low-80s with high humidity.

Rest of next week

The pattern is setting up such that Tuesday looks stormy to our north. Expect a few showers or thunderstorms locally, but I don’t think we’re going to see a whole lot around here Monday night and much of Tuesday.

That could change Wednesday. Somewhere in Texas, we’re likely to see a robust area of thunderstorms (what we call an MCS in meteorology, mesoscale convective system). This would probably develop somewhere in the I-35 corridor on Tuesday night and ride southeast across the eastern half of the state and into Louisiana on Wednesday.

We are highlighted under Tuesday’s severe weather risk for this reason (it would most likely be toward Wednesday morning), as well as Wednesday’s risk. It’s a bit too early to pinpoint details or how much rain we might see, but if you have plans Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, keep an eye on this forecast. Things should calm down a good bit and turn much less humid to close out next week.

Summary: A very quiet Easter weekend is expected, with the most annoying weather element likely to be the breeze each day. Our next front arrives early Tuesday after a very warm Monday. It will bring a few showers but nothing too bad, followed up by quiet, pleasant weather later next week.

Is hurricane season really going to be that bad?

Over at The Eyewall, I’ve posted roughly once a month about hurricane season since January. I’m just basically tracking the status of El Niño and Atlantic water temperatures. We’re in the middle of a rather unprecedented global marine heat wave right now. The global oceans hit a record high temperature last month, and we’ve essentially set new daily records for the last full year, every day. It’s not just El Niño. That’s not hurting things, but it does not explain everything. We’ll cover this more at The Eyewall over time, but suffice to say, the Atlantic is one of many bodies of water that is blistering warm for March.

In fact, Atlantic Ocean water temps are already at levels you would typically see in early June. In our posts at The Eyewall, I’ve basically said that you can expect seasonal hurricane forecasts to come surging out of the gate this year. They are going to be calling for active, if not hyperactive levels of activity. They’re going to be ugly. No two ways about it.

The first major entrant in this derby, AccuWeather came out on Wednesday, stating that they expect 20 to 25 named storms and 8 to 12 hurricanes. Because that’s not enough, they framed the season as likely being “explosive.” AccuWeather also highlighted the western Gulf, Florida, and Carolinas for above average activity. In my post yesterday at The Eyewall, I did note that they got their landfall points correct in 2023, but they also missed a couple areas. In 2022 they said the Gulf Coast between Texas and the Florida Panhandle was at greatest risk, as were the Carolinas. There were virtually no major impacts in those areas that season, with Hurricane Ian instead ramming the southwest coast of Florida. This is a long way of me saying that seasonal landfall forecasts have extremely mixed results, so take them all with a grain of salt.

The next major entrant should be Colorado State University, which unveils their outlook late next week at the National Tropical Weather Conference in South Padre.

Obviously, all this elicits a lot of concern from people. We’ve heard from people asking about how worried they should be this year. Others are already using gallows humor to cope already. I think it’s important to say a couple things here. First, as an individual or family, you shouldn’t use a seasonal hurricane forecast as the basis for your preparation. You should prepare the same way each year for hurricane season: Evacuation plans, contingency plans regarding work, pets, and childcare, emergency kits, flood insurance, H-E-B cocoa granola in my case. For you, me, and the lamp post, honestly, seasonal hurricane forecasts are noise, scientific exercises that really don’t tell us anything seriously actionable. Sure, many of us like to know what they say, but in terms of what they actually mean, it’s very little. For governments and businesses, it’s another matter. Second, an active season does not always mean an active season — for Texas. Last year was active. Texas had Tropical Storm Harold, which was probably more beneficial than destructive for the southern part of the state. But aside from that, it was quiet. 1983 was a virtually silent hurricane season overall, except for Hurricane Alicia here in Houston which would easily be a 10 to 20 billion dollar storm today. So, active or quiet, we should prep each year.

Basically, do what you want with seasonal hurricane forecasts. But look, the reality is we live in a hurricane prone location. We accept that fact by living here. So, do what you can to prepare early in case this is the year. And if it’s not, well good for us. But please try not to lose sleep over these forecasts. There’s going to be a lot of noise over the next 2 months in the run up to the season. You’re best served using the time to prepare in case it does end up being our year.

On to the weather.

Today through Easter Sunday

The good news is that travel looks great all weekend. There should be no serious issues. There will likely be some patchy fog on a couple mornings. Aside from that and a breeze each day, especially on Sunday, it looks good. I do think some folks may find the breeze to be a bit much at times. Onshore flow really kicks in this weekend, sending our high temperatures into upper-70s today and 80s tomorrow and Easter Sunday. Morning lows will be in the low-60s tomorrow and mid-60s Sunday.

Rain chances should be close to zero all weekend.

Early next week

Our next cold front is targeting Tuesday. No joke, we’ll probably see one of our warmest days of the year so far on Monday, with highs well into the mid-80s. The number to beat is 89° that we reached on March 5th.

That will precede a frontal passage on Tuesday morning-ish. This front looks no worse right now than the one we had on Monday that brought some downpours and thunder for a short time. Rain totals look modest. That will usher in cooler, drier, nice weather for later next week. Expect lows to probably bottom out in the 50s for a couple pleasant mornings Wednesday and Thursday.

We’ll have the very latest on the forecast for April 8th’s eclipse on Monday. Not a whole lot has changed today, so let’s see what the weekend does, and then we can really dig in on this hard next week.

Summary: After a wet and at times weird Thursday, the weather will calm down for the weekend. Our next storm aims for us on Monday, with another chance of showers or thunderstorms. Temperatures will remain on the cooler side at night, with mild to warm daytimes.

Quick editor’s note. Look for the second in our Q&A post series later this morning with answers to some of your questions!

Recap of yesterday

Rain totals yesterday were pretty healthy across most of the region. Between the early day rain in Houston and points south and later day rounds of thunderstorms north of Houston, virtually the entire area picked up a needed 1 to 3 inches of rain, with pockets of higher amounts.

Additionally, we had another couple rounds of hail reports with the evening storms, which felt like they came out of nowhere. If you squinted enough at early day model data, you could see some signals, but in real time, it was a bit difficult to pick out that there would be two additional rounds of storms north of Houston between the AM rain and overnight storms.

Anyway, we did have some pretty nasty hail north of Houston, with mostly quarter to half-dollar size hail reports from Copperfield through Jersey Village to near Acres Home and the Northside.

We had some additional hail reported north of there after 9 PM, though reports seemed a bit sparser. Then we had one final round of storms around or after Midnight. Those had strong winds and maybe some brief small hail. And absolutely torrential rain. And a gorgeous lightning display as they moved away.

It was a day.

Today and Saturday

We need a little time to dry out now, and we’ll get it today and tomorrow. Clouds should be on the gradual decrease today, leading to a nice afternoon. A couple showers may graze areas northeast of Houston late today as the system responsible for yesterday’s storms exits to the east. Highs will be in the 70s.

Look for sunshine tomorrow with highs well into the 70s after morning lows in the 50s. Splendid weather for the Bayou City Art Festival downtown or Saturday evening’s Houston Dash match with Racing Louisville, among many other activities this weekend. Yesterday’s rain did a number on pollen, but we may see it bounce back this weekend, so just be advised if you’re an allergy sufferer!

Sunday

We’ll transition to a slightly more humid setup as Sunday progresses. Morning lows in the 50s or low-60s would be followed by more clouds than sun at times, with highs in the mid-70s. Onshore winds will nudge up as the day wears on, so you’ll probably notice that also. I wouldn’t entirely rule out an isolated shower late in the day, but the vast majority of us should stay dry.

Monday

Our next system will join us for a limited engagement on Monday. Scattered showers and thunderstorms are likely before a cold front approaches in the evening hours. I don’t want to overstep my bounds of confidence right now, especially given how yesterday evening unfolded. But this storm looks a little less potent than yesterday’s. Still, showers and storms will be possible as early as Monday morning, ending sometime in the evening (though it shouldn’t rain in that entire window we don’t think).

Most areas should see about a quarter to half-inch or so of rain, but I would say this is a bit of a fluid forecast. Check back in either this weekend or Monday to see if anything has changed.

Rest of next week

Much drier air builds in behind Monday night’s front. Dry air in late March allows us to cool off quickly in the evening and warm up quickly in the daytime. Look for highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s, if not a night in the 40s too. But we could easily see a 20 to 25 degree range in temperatures each day. Break out the quarter zips and shorts!

Summary: A couple rounds of shower chances exist today, this morning and later this afternoon. Many folks won’t see much meaningful rain though. Showers clear this evening with much cooler and drier weather for the weekend. Temps warm back up next week with rain chances returning for the second half of the week.

Before we begin today, Eric and I want to say “Howdy!” to Nyree Doucette’s 4th grade students at Sinclair Elementary. They have been using our forecasts to help plan for their Rodeo Day today, hoping for no rain. It’s been a real close call all week it seems, and unfortunately, it’s not any less close today as you’ll see below. Whatever happens, thank you for reading our forecast, hopefully you can learn something, and we really hope your Rodeo Day goes off and is fantastic!

Today

So, we saw a few more showers than perhaps we expected yesterday evening, which creates a slight conundrum in our forecast for today. Based on everything I’ve been able to digest this morning, I think there are two general phases to today’s rain chances. The first phase is this morning. Sorry to Ms. Doucette’s 4th graders.

That doesn’t mean the morning will be a total washout! But it does mean that we should see scattered showers around the region. I would not entirely rule out a rumble of thunder, but that should be the exception, not the rule this morning. Not everyone will see rain but those that do could briefly see some heavier downpours. I would assume the afternoon is partly sunny with some stray showers or a thunderstorm around. No severe weather is expected in Houston or points south at this time, but the chance for an isolated strong or severe storm increases as you go north of Harris County. Folks in the Piney Woods up through Shreveport may see some decent hailers today.

Other than that, highs today should manage our fifth consecutive day of 80 or better.

The second chance at some storms comes late this afternoon or this evening. Read on.

Rodeo Forecast

These storms should be even more isolated and less pronounced than anything earlier in the day, but one or two rogue thunderstorms could pop up in the area this evening with the actual cold front as you’re making your way to Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo. It’s Major Lazer night, so we don’t want to throw any cold water on your anticipation, but just don’t be shocked if there’s a brief 10 to 20 minute shower. Otherwise, the front should begin to push across the area in the evening, sending temperatures from to mid to upper-70s as you arrive to the upper 60s as you leave. There could be a bit of a breeze on the way out with noticeably lower humidity.

We’ll eventually see temperatures drop all the way into the mid-50s by Saturday morning.

Weekend

The weekend looks fine, albeit a bit on the cool side. Expect to see clouds giving way to some sun through the day Saturday and perhaps again on Sunday. Along with a breeze, temperatures will be in the mid-60s Saturday afternoon and the mid to upper-60s on Sunday with less wind.

Sunday morning will be a cool one, with lows generally in the 40s across the region!

Next week

Monday looks great with sunshine and highs back into the 70s. Morning lows should be near 50 degrees. Tuesday should see a few more clouds with morning lows in the 50s and highs in the middle or upper-70s.

By the time we get to Wednesday, a few showers will be possible, with a better chance Thursday and/or Friday. Details remain to be seen, but we still could be looking at some scattered downpours and thunder in that time. Highs will be in the 70s or 80s with some humidity and lows in the 60s.