Matt Lanza

The last time Bush Airport reported anything other than overcast or broken overcast skies was back on the morning of January 27th. That week-long streak will end at some point today. Most of the area will see at least some sun, if not full sun before the end of the day, and everyone sees sunshine tomorrow. In addition, we’ve gone over 100 straight hours below 50 degrees, not a particularly big deal, but it has certainly been cold and quite damp. That should end today also. All in all, if you have weekend plans, you can confidently go forth with them.

Today

Most of the area remains under low clouds this morning. You have to get east of about Wallisville and Anahuac or west of Flatonia on I-10 to get into clearing.

The clouds will erode through the day today, allowing the sun to emerge. I think they’ll probably dissipate from east to west through the morning and afternoon. Areas most likely to stay cloudy most of today are probably west of Houston. Once the clouds diminish, look for temperatures to rebound into the 50s over most of the area. Places that stay under clouds may only get close to 50 degrees. Winds will be light in most spots but perhaps a bit gusty over the open water.

Weekend

Both Saturday and Sunday should feature more sun than clouds. Winds will flip back onshore on Sunday, which may allow for a few extra clouds. So Saturday will start chilly, with 30s in most of the area, but we should warm to near 60 or so. But Sunday will start in the 40s and warm to near 70 degrees.

Just a quick note: Models do predict some fog may develop tonight north and west of about Cypress. Anyone in places like Navasota into Bryan or College Station and north toward Huntsville, just be advised that there could be temperatures at or below freezing with fog. That could make travel a bit slick late tonight and early Saturday morning. Once the sun comes up, it will improve quickly. This should not affect the Houston area.

Early next week

Monday should be partly to mostly sunny and warm. You’ll notice a little more humidity creeping back through the day, and there may even be some patchy fog development on the coast. Most places will top off in the 70s. Tuesday should be even warmer despite more clouds, with AM lows in the 60s and daytime highs around 75 or a few better in spots. Again, some fog is possible along the coast.

Next front

Consistent with Eric’s post yesterday, it looks like we can pencil in the next front for Tuesday night or Wednesday. The timing and details still need to be sorted out, but at this point we are looking for showers and storms in some window between Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon, followed by cooler, drier air to close out next week. Or at least that’s the line of thinking we’re going to sell to you today. Some models bring back rain chances as soon as Friday, so we’ll see. More on Monday!

Rest of Texas

Interior Texas can continue to thaw out today and begin to assess and repair the damage left behind from this week’s ice storm. There are still nearly 250,000 customers without power across the state. If you plan to travel toward Dallas or Austin or San Antonio or El Paso, road conditions should be clear today through the weekend. As always, check with drivetexas.org for the latest information.

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