Matt Lanza

Good morning. We just wanted to offer a Sunday post for a couple reasons. First, obviously, after this week’s storms, we know a lot of people are going to be sensitive to the mention (or sound) of thunderstorms. Secondly, we have more confidence in today’s forecast.

What’s changed since Friday? Honestly, not a whole lot. We’re getting areas of heavy rain, as expected. But I think both confidence and intensity of heavy rain has increased enough for us to place the area under a Stage 1 flood alert on our flood scale.

We have already seen parts of western Harris County, which were hardest hit this past week in terms of rain see over 2 inches of rainfall. The Weather Prediction Center has kept much of the area under a slight risk (level 2/4) of excessive rainfall for today.

Basically, given Tuesday’s rain, the fact that today’s rain is performing or overperforming to this point, and the shorter-range model guidance for the rest of today, we felt it necessitated an upgrade in messaging. So, please watch for areas of street flooding, especially across western Harris, northern Harris, southern Montgomery, Liberty, and Chambers Counties today, east to Beaumont.

Radar as of 8:35 shows numerous areas of heavier rainfall, especially near Liberty and Cleveland, as well as across northern and western Harris, Montgomery, and Wharton Counties.

With a front essentially crawling across the area today, repetitive rounds of storms are likely, and that’s why we have the flooding risk. Rain tapers to isolated showers this evening.

Severe weather

We want to be clear about today’s forecast. Two things can be true simultaneously: 1.) Some of the storms later this morning or this afternoon could be strong to severe. 2.) This setup looks absolutely nothing like the one that caused Tuesday’s severe weather and tornado outbreak.

This looks to be more of a classic Houston severe weather setup, with the risk for isolated cells producing gusty winds, hail, or yes, even a brief spinup. The odds of this are modestly higher east of Houston into Louisiana. I wouldn’t dwell on this too much about this today, but I also did not experience a tornado on Tuesday, so I get it. It’s a good idea to just monitor the weather through the afternoon to be safe.

Monday & Tuesday

Additional showers are possible on both Monday and Tuesday this week, but at this time, we do not expect heavy rainfall. That chance may increase later in the week, however.

The front is going to essentially stall out over the area. What that does is create challenges for temperature forecasting. I would anticipate Monday being a cool day right now with temperatures generally in the 50s. All bets are off on Tuesday and beyond. Ensemble guidance projects high temperatures on Tuesday could be as low as 50 degrees or as warm as 75 degrees. Basically, the exact location of the front will determine how warm or cool we get in the days ahead. Have your wardrobe planned for multiple seasons this week. Eric will detail this more on Monday. We will update (if needed) again later today.

Before we get into the forecast today, we just want to go over some of the news from the National Weather Service office in League City from the last couple days. First off, the tornado that ravaged parts of Pasadena, South Houston, Deer Park, and Baytown was classified as an EF-3.

It was the first EF-3 tornado in Harris County since 2002 (La Porte).

Two additional tornadoes have also been confirmed in the Houston area. Both were rated EF-0. One traveled about 14.5 miles from Needville through Thompsons in Fort Bend County. The other occurred in Pearland, preceding the South Houston tornado and was on the ground for a bit over 2 miles.

In Liberty County, an EF-2 tornado has been confirmed, but details are not expected on that until a little later today.

The last couple days have been mercifully placid, and we look to get one more of those before some more rain.

Today

Friday should be a mostly fine day, with intervals of sun and clouds and temperatures popping up to near 60 degrees.

Tomorrow

Clouds will really increase and thicken up tonight into Saturday. By late tonight and early Saturday morning, a few showers should begin to break out, along with periods of drizzle or light rain. We don’t currently expect Saturday to be a washout, but you’ll probably see a few raindrops in much of the area. The clouds and showers will compete with warm air flowing in from the Gulf of Mexico, so after a mild morning in the mid or upper-50s, we will likely warm to near 70 degrees. You will also notice the wind picking up some on Saturday afternoon, with gusts to perhaps 25 mph or so.

Sunday

The next in a series of systems will impact us late Saturday evening and Sunday. Look for rain to break out as a coastal low develops. This system will lack much of what Tuesday’s had for significant severe weather. We do not expect serious severe weather, but a few stronger thunderstorms are possible. That said, we have plentiful moisture available Sunday, and we will be looking for the potential of locally heavy downpours, especially in the morning. This would be most likely south of I-10.

Right now, the Weather Prediction Center has the region in a slight (level 2/4) risk of excessive rainfall. We don’t expect rain quite of the intensity we saw on Tuesday, but given the wet ground, we could see some areas of ponding or street flooding emerge Sunday morning under the heaviest rain. In addition, water levels on creeks are still high in parts of the area, especially north and west of Houston, so any heavy rainfall will likely exacerbate that a bit. Expect an inch or two on average southeast of Houston, with lesser amounts as you go north and west of the city.

Conditions should gradually improve later Sunday afternoon and evening. We will top off in the 70s.

Early next week

Early next week looks dominated by this front that gets hung up over our area on Sunday. That will likely be in place through Wednesday. The problem from a forecaster’s perspective is that it’s going to wobble around. That means that there’s probably going to be a pretty annoying gradient of temperatures over the region next week, with readings ranging from the 50s to the 70s depending on the exact position of the front. In addition, rainfall will be possible through the entire period, although it looks mostly minor in nature until later Wednesday or Thursday. We should have a little more clarity on the exact daily details Sunday or Monday.

Next front

Our next real front of significance after Sunday will come on Thursday it appears. Expect a period of showers and storms, along with some locally heavy rain. This should usher in a slightly less active pattern and a chilly air mass in time for next weekend. We do not expect a significant freeze at this point, however. We’ll update you on that Monday (or Sunday!) as well.

Today was certainly a day. First off, we want to express our thoughts and best wishes to those impacted by today’s tornadoes, and we hope that the recovery process presents the fewest amount of headaches that are possible.

Tornadoes of that scale and length are not common in Houston. Since 1993, we’ve had a number of “strong” (EF-2+) tornadoes in the Houston area, most of which have been on the eastern side of the city. Today’s tornado was no exception. Here’s a map of tornadoes since 1993 that are EF-2 or greater. Only one in the immediate area rated an EF-3, which was a short tracked twister near Shoreacres in 2002.

In the tornado records, an EF-2 tornado has never struck the Houston area in January. Why 1993 as a cutoff? Because November 1992 had the king of modern Houston tornado outbreaks, including an F4 in Channelview, which we wrote about a few years ago.

If you’re curious, here’s a map of all known “strong” tornadoes in the Houston region since 1950.

The National Weather Service will be sending out survey teams tomorrow morning to assess the damage and assign a rating to the tornadoes. So we will see if it was indeed a “strong” tornado or not. Remember, the rating is determined by a number of factors, not the least of which is building construction. Some poorly constructed, smaller buildings can be obliterated in a mere EF-1 tornado. Based on the initial photos of damage, I am guessing it will be at least an EF-2. But the NWS folks are the experts on this, and they’ll make that call.

Today also marked the first time a Tornado Emergency has been issued in Houston. We all know about Flash Flood Emergencies from recent years. But Tornado Emergencies certainly represent a new kind of horror for our area. They are rare and only issued when there is a confirmed, likely strong to catastrophic tornado ongoing in a populated area. If ever there were a day to issue one in Houston, today was the day. Hopefully we don’t see that again for many years.

Not to be outdone, the rainfall today was tremendous for January. We still have flooding ongoing out by Mound Creek and Little Cypress Creek in western Harris County. Several bayous ended up at bankfull or even out of their banks today. We mentioned flooding. We mentioned heavy rain. But we probably could have been a little more aggressive on the rainfall aspect of things. Today certainly qualified as a Stage 1 flooding event on our flood scale.

At any rate, we’ll know more about today’s events tomorrow. On a personal note, I want to thank the folks at the National Weather Service, as well as our other colleagues across media here in Houston for a very strong, effective messaging campaign today. Collectively, our messaging and the issuance of a Tornado Emergency by NWS no doubt helped protect lives and property in the Houston area today. For us here at SCW, this is truly why we exist. I saw several comments say that “we saw Eric and Matt really ramp up their messaging today, so it was concerning.” That’s exactly why we operate how we do. We want to be the jovial, informative but not in your face meteorologists 90-95 percent of the time. But on days like today, we get serious and down to business. Houston gets a lot of severe weather “days,” but most of them are low-end potential. They get a lot of chatter and sometimes some hype, and yes maybe on a couple of those days something happens. But we knew this had a unique high end potential for this area, and at least in a couple parts of the area, this potential was likely realized. We are grateful it was not worse. As we always say, we are here to help serve the community, and tomorrow we will be back to our normal, mostly boring selves. But when it’s really, truly time to stand up, act, and pay attention, we will make sure that message gets across. Thanks for your continued loyalty and readership. -Matt

Happy Friday to those of you celebrating. I just want to give a quick thanks to Eric for covering me last Friday, as I attended the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in Denver. I also got to give a talk about the Space City Weather Flood Scale, and we may have some opportunities to partner up with some experts to improve it, something I’m excited to wade into (pun intended). The talk should be publicly available to view in a couple months. I’ll let you know when that happens.

Our forecast today features a bit of a mix, including two fairly decent rain opportunities, one tomorrow and another next week.

Today

Clouds will be on the increase today have arrived today, as the first of our two systems comes this way. Yesterday was sunny and pleasant. Today will be cloudy and cool. High temperatures should check in about 15 degrees cooler than Thursday, with most areas not escaping the mid or upper-50s. As far as rain goes, sprinkles and/or showers will begin to spread from southwest to northeast as the day progresses. Most places should see some form of rain by this afternoon.

Tonight into Saturday

While it probably will not rain all night tonight, there will be periods of drizzle, light rain, and moderate rain likely at times through the night. A stray rumble of thunder is also possible. These waves of showers and rain will continue pumping in through much of Saturday. Again, it’s unlikely that it will rain everywhere all day. But you’ll need an umbrella at the ready wherever you are.

This is unlikely to be a soaker for most of the area, but we will see some places with a decent amount of rain, perhaps close to an inch or so. Other areas will only see a couple tenths of an inch or so.

In addition to the rain, it will be rather breezy, especially over the water and near the coast. Winds of 15 to 25 mph will be likely, along with some higher gusts, especially in the morning on Saturday. That’ll add some chill to the air.

Temperatures will fall back into the low-50s Friday night and Saturday morning before climbing back into the mid or upper-50s Saturday afternoon.

Sunday

The second half of the weekend looks lovely, with sunshine, less wind, and highs around 60 degrees after morning lows in the 40s or upper-30s.

Monday

I would expect mostly a repeat of things Monday, although clouds may increase a bit later in the day, and temperatures will warm from the low-40s into the mid-60s.

Tuesday and beyond

If there is one day worth watching in terms of weather, it’s Tuesday. Modeling has been fairly inconsistent on the exact details of this next system, but a couple things are known. There is likely going to be a storm system that develops in Texas. It will bring both rain and wintry precipitation to the state (just rain here in Houston). But depending on the exact strength and track of this system, we could be in for some strong or severe thunderstorms Tuesday in the Houston area.

Right now the warm front is expected to be just offshore, which keeps our instability and chances at severe weather rather low. However, if this shifts farther north any, we could be in for a forecast change. So you’ll want to check back with us on Monday. In addition to an inch or locally more of rain, I would expect some pretty healthy wind on Tuesday too.

If you are planning any travel to North Texas, Oklahoma, or the Panhandles there is a pretty decent chance that snow or ice could be an issue. This is primarily true for Lubbock and Amarillo into Wichita Falls and Oklahoma, but I would also watch the DFW Metroplex and Abilene as well.

We have a long way to go here, so specific details are impossible to flesh out, but this could be an impactful storm for parts of the state. After this storm passes, we look good for a few days, with highs mostly in the 50s and lows in the 40s or upper-30s.