In brief: The forecast outlined in our post this morning is more or less on track. But we have a finer handle on the details of what to expect, and when, this weekend. In short, expect to be awoken early Saturday as storms sweep through.
Friday evening
There are some isolated showers on the southern periphery of the Houston metro area this evening, near Lake Jackson, but for the most part we expect this to be a quiet evening across the region. Expect fairly humid air with temperatures in the 70s as you take in high school football or partake in other activities. We have no weather concerns until after midnight.
Early Saturday
As we’ve been discussing for awhile now, a fairly robust squall line will move through the region during the overnight hours and into Saturday morning. This line will bring the usual mix of lighting, thunder, strong winds, heavy rain, and potentially some hail. The line will fortunately be making fairly good progress from west to east, so the really intense weather won’t last too long, perhaps 30 minutes or at most an hour. On the Excitable Dogs Scale, I’m going to go with an 8.5 for tonight out of 10.
I expect the line to reach College Station between 1 and 3 am CT; a line from Katy to The Woodlands between 3 and 5 am; central Houston between 4 and 6 am; and the coast between 5 and 7 am. During these hours it would be best to hunker down as we quickly pick up 1 to 3 inches of rainfall and the usual, low-lying streets may briefly flood. Within an hour or two of sunrise these storms should have moved off to the east. Some scattered showers may linger.
Later Saturday morning
We expect some clearing after the squall line moves through, perhaps even a few hours of sunny skies. By some miracle, this happens to be when we’ve scheduled our Fall Day event, a celebration of Space City Weather’s 10th anniversary. Please come by Midtown Park, 2811 Travis, in Houston between 10 am and noon to say hello. We can’t rule out a few scattered showers during the late morning hours, but there’s plenty of cover at the park.
Saturday afternoon and overnight
We expect relatively quiet conditions from late morning through the afternoon, aside from the potential for some sporadic showers. However as a weak front approaches, we should see a second squall line develop later on Saturday evening. The timing is still a little fuzzy, but these storms could impact the College Station area during the evening hours and then drop into Houston in the 10 pm to 2 am time frame. So if you have Saturday night plans, you’ll want to keep an eye on the radar. After this weather clears we should see calm conditions on Sunday, and clearing skies.
We’ll have a full update for you on all of this tomorrow morning.
