Matt Lanza

Well, we failed to officially hit 100 degrees in Houston this weekend, instead topping out with a pair of 99s on Friday and Sunday, sandwiching a 98 in there on Saturday. The heat will continue this week, though we’ll likely shave at least a couple degrees off things. That makes your author happy because, conveniently, the Lanza household is dealing with a partial AC outage this morning. Yay.

Monday and Tuesday

More of the same, really. Sun, some clouds, and highs in the mid to upper 90s. Rain chances aren’t zero, but they’re awfully close.

We are already seeing some Saharan dust in the area, and as we move into Tuesday, it will become a bit thicker as another surge of dust arrives in Texas. That may subside a bit on Wednesday morning before additional dust later Wednesday and on Thursday. Look for haze, less blue sky, and maybe some more interesting sunrises and sunsets. Those of you that have respiratory ailments that flare up when these hit should be ready for a couple unpleasant days.

Wednesday

Our next reasonable chance of at least some rainfall comes on Wednesday. If you’re choosing cities for your fantasy rainfall battles on Wednesday, I would probably still skip Houston, but the chance is closer to 10 percent than zero. Look for mid-90s. Southerly winds will continue around 10 to 15 mph, gusting 20 to 25 mph at times.

Thursday and Friday

We have a bit of a mixed bag to close the week. For now, I’d expect temperatures to bounce back a degree or two, with highs in the upper 90s for the most part. Rain chances remain at a paltry 10 to maybe 20 percent on Friday.

You can see that expected rainfall over the next 7 days continues to look abysmal. That said, I do think a couple locations may do better than what is shown here, so we’ll hold out hope that some of us get lucky.

Beyond Friday

The weekend gets a little more interesting at least. We will have strong high pressure anchored over Kansas, which is a bit farther north than what we dealt with this weekend. This will allow for continued hot weather, yes, but there may be some “noise” that can sneak in underneath the high.

So I would say that rain chances may actually improve a bit this weekend into early next week. There are some signs of a weak “backdoor” cold front trying to slide in from Louisiana on Sunday or Monday thanks to a pretty strong trough in the atmosphere along the East Coast. Whether that gets here or not is TBD, but just having that in the neighborhood may be enough to trigger some scattered downpours at least.

Bottom line: Rain chances look better this weekend, though still not especially high, and it will remain quite hot.

Tropics

The National Hurricane Center is outlining an area in the western Caribbean for possible development this week.

While this probably is something to at least monitor, I don’t think there is a lot of concern about this here. With that very strong ridge over the Central U.S., that argues that whatever happens there will likely stay suppressed to our south. Still, we will keep an eye on things just in case.

Summer will continue to tighten its grip on Houston this weekend with at least 3 straight days of near-100 degree temperatures ahead. On average, our first 100 degree day isn’t until mid-July. Many years don’t see one at all. In fact, our last 100 degree day was August 29, 2020 on the backside of Hurricane Laura. We’ll see if we break through this weekend.

Drought continues to be a notable topic. While it’s been hot quite early, this setup remains very unlike 2011, so let’s not use that as a comparison. Some other drought years in the 80s and 90s are probably more applicable comparisons. Drought coverage actually improved statewide over the last week, thanks to some showers and storms in West Texas. East Texas saw drought begin to expand again. In the Houston area, we were up about 10 percent week over week.

Harris County is now almost fully covered by drought, with some severe drought now taking hold across the southeast third and nearly all of Fort Bend, Brazoria, and Galveston Counties. Extreme drought expanded this week to cover portions of Brazoria, Matagorda, Wharton, Chambers, and Jackson Counties. With no meaningful rain likely over the next week and 100 degree weather, it’s safe to assume this will expand further next week.

Today through Sunday

As noted above, expect sunshine and heat on repeat. It will be near or above 100 degrees inland each day, in the 90s at the coast, and all locations will see 70s to low-80s each morning. Please do take it easy this weekend, as our bodies are not acclimated to this sort of high summer heat yet. Heat advisories are a virtual guarantee this weekend.

Early next week

The large area of high pressure over Texas helping to fuel the heat this weekend will begin to slip eastward on Monday and Tuesday. This will at least open the Gulf up a little bit for some daytime sea breeze thunderstorms. While rain chances still look rather pathetic and no better than 10 to 20 percent each day, it’s still a bit better than it has been. Because the core of the heat does pull away, this should allow us to “cool” back into the mid or upper-90s for highs each day with nighttime lows still in the 70s to near 80 degrees.

Later next week

Another area of high pressure is going to surge into the southern Plains for the end of next week.

This one looks to anchor a little farther north than the one we see this weekend. While this will likely keep the door cracked open for some sea breeze storms each day, again, chances look rather low and temperatures may creep up another degree or two.

Bottom line: Excessively hot and humid for June over the next week, with heat peaking today through Sunday. A little “less hot” next week with non-zero rain chances (but still low). Maybe hotter toward next weekend again with continued generally low rain chances. The next 2 weeks of rainfall anomalies per the European ensemble model?

Ugly.

Tropics

Some models do continue to try and put a disturbance in the Bay of Campeche late next week, but no reliable model develops it into anything organized at this point. So nothing for us to worry about out there or on the horizon.

Houston has occasionally endured some painful Memorial Day weekend weather. This year will not be one of them. We expect sunshine, with highs in the upper-80s to low-90s each day and lows mainly in the 70s. Today should be the hottest day of the next several, but the humidity will increase this weekend.

Yes, there is a small chance for a pop-up shower, especially Monday, but consider yourself lucky, should you see one. Wear sunscreen, stay hydrated, and enjoy the weekend if you can. Feel free to unplug the weather button for a few days. We will be doing just that ourselves.

Rest of next week

After the holiday on Monday, we see onshore flow and at least a chance for a few afternoon showers each day, typical summer weather. As of now, there’s nothing out there that looks particularly concerning or bothersome, so we’ll turn it down a notch until Tuesday and come back at you refreshed and ready to tackle early summer!

While this weekend is reserved to honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, we do also want to express our gratitude to all men and women who have helped defend our nation over the years. Thank you for your service.

Averaging the temperature recorded in Houston (at Bush Airport) from May 1 through yesterday would give us the hottest front 19 days of May on record back to the 1890s. It’s probably not terribly surprising. We will begin to see things change this weekend, however, and it can’t come soon enough.

The drought situation has not changed much in the Houston area since last week. We still see extreme drought creeping in across Wharton, Matagorda, and Brazoria Counties. It’s really the entire state of Texas that needs some help right now. Almost 30 percent of the state is classified as being in “exceptional” drought, the most coverage of that classification since early 2012, as we were coming out of the 2011 drought.

Our chance for help both locally and statewide is about to kick into gear. But it’s a bit of a tenuous story. I’ve been watching this wet pattern closely, and we started to see the European ensemble model backpedal a bit yesterday, taking us from about 2″ above normal the next 10 days or so down to 1″ above normal. While that may not sound like a huge change, this will go a long way toward relaxing drought, and any cutting back on that would not be great news. So, fingers crossed that the next week or so performs.

Today

The weather remains on autopilot for one more day: Sun, clouds, high humidity, and temperatures in the 90s. Winds will be up a bit today compared to recent days, with some 15 to 25 mph gusts possible. Perhaps that will help make it a bit less painful.

Most of us should stay dry, but perhaps a stray shower or storm could impact areas west of Houston later this afternoon.

Saturday

We should not see any significant weather changes tomorrow, but we may notice a few additional clouds. It should not be much cooler. In fact, with a cold front moving into Texas on Saturday but coming up short of Houston, that may actually allow for a little additional onshore flow or “compressional heating” ahead of the front, which could allow us to squeeze an extra degree or two out of the air tomorrow. Shower chances look minimal during the daylight hours right now. There may be a slightly better chance at storms tomorrow night, especially north of I-10.

Sunday

The big changes should really kick in on Sunday. The front will likely come up just short of Houston, but it will be close enough to the area to allow for numerous showers and storms to develop through the day on Sunday. Timing exactly where and when these will hit your backyard is impossible to do right now, but we believe most areas will see at least some rain at least once or twice on Sunday. And with a very, very humid air mass in place, any rain that does fall could be heavy, so keep alert for some localized street flooding if you’ll be out and about.

With rain and clouds, look for upper-80s or low-90s Sunday at best.

Monday & Tuesday

Weather modeling seems to agree that Monday may be a bit of a “down” day in terms of rain chances. So we may just see a few showers around with a mix of clouds and some sun. Look for highs in the upper-80s.

Tuesday should see another disturbance or two swing into the area, and that means that rain chances will probably trend up for that day. Look for scattered to numerous showers and storms with highs in the mid-80s. Again, any rain could be heavy.

How much rain through Wednesday morning? There will be a very wide variability with some places seeing an inch or less and others likely seeing 2 or 3 inches or even more. Consider this map an average, but you can clearly see we’re expecting a good bit of beneficial rain through Tuesday.

One other quick note: An early season Saharan dust cloud will work into our area on Tuesday into Wednesday, so you may see a hazier, dirtier looking sky in between storms. This isn’t uncommon in early summer, but it is a bit early for a dust event of this magnitude based on my experience. I would not read into it meaning anything in particular, however, as I don’t believe there’s any established correlation between early season dust and the upcoming hurricane season.

Later next week

Questions begin to arise later next week as to whether we can keep this wetter pattern going with daily shower and storm chances, or if things dial back a bit. Based on the latest data, I would expect a healthy chance of rain again on Wednesday before storm chances diminish a good bit on Thursday and Friday.

Memorial Weekend looks pretty good right now. Lower-end rain chances may build back in on Sunday or Monday, but as of now, it’s nothing too serious. We’ll keep tabs on it, but at this point, I would say at least 60 percent of the weekend looks great. It will be hot and humid, of course, with highs likely around 90 or a bit hotter. More next week!