Good morning. The overall forecast, unfortunately, remains largely the same. A stultifying ridge of high pressure remains anchored over the Southern United States, and it will bring us very hot, and largely rain-free weather for at least the next week or ten days. The only real question is whether it backs off to the west just enough next week to allow for a modest increase in rain chances. That is possible, although not certain. In the mean time, we will remain in a pattern of extreme heat, based on “wet bulb globe temperatures,” through the weekend.
Wednesday
Yesterday a small area near Spring Valley, just to the west of central Houston, receiving a bullseye of rainfall. A few neighborhoods saw as much as one-half inch of rainfall. So it will go again today, with perhaps a 10 percent chance of rainfall while the rest of us see hot and sunny weather, with highs of around 100 degrees give or take. Winds will be light, out of the south at around 10 mph. Lows tonight remain persistently warm, only dropping to around 80 degrees.
Thursday and Friday
The pattern really doesn’t change much during the second half of the week, with high heat, sunny skies, and just a very slight chance of rainfall. Please continue to take heat precautions.
Saturday and Sunday
The weekend will not see much (if any) relief from the heat, although humidity levels may slacken just slightly. As high pressure slowly slides west, rain chances by Sunday may bump up slightly, to about 20 percent. We’ll see.
Next week
Truth be told, I don’t envision much change as we get deeper into August next week. The only potential ray of hope is that daily rain chances will inch upward, from 10 percent this week to perhaps 30 percent next week. My goodness, our yards could certainly use the break.
I am starting to see trees in my neighborhood suffer from the lack of rain. This is getting ridiculous.
People need to water or they will lose their trees and then blame it on lack of rain. Then there will be less trees and for some reason homeowners don’t see the need to replace trees and a once shaded canopy is gone.
If you are not running a drip hose, you need to water your foundation as well. Watering is way less expensive than foundation work ..or tree removal for that matter
Our neighbor never waters. Last year the pine borer worms got into the huge pine tree in his front yard. Cost him over $ 2000 to have removed. They won’t attack a well watered tree.
When the weather gets dry like this I deep water every 2 weeks.
my neighbor’s tree fell on my house during Harvey. I know a scientist who told me that Houston is a prairie and trees don’t even belong in Houston. Certainly the soil is not hospitable to trees or crops, or anything other than the grasses of the prairie.
So you want all trees to be removed in Houston? not gonna happen
the tree hate in Houston is ridiculous
That’s half-correct on the history part. Much of current-day Houston overlaps with the western extremity of the great southern pine forest, and the remainder overlaps with the Gulf Coastal Prairie. Trees are easily cultivated on former prairie soils, and have been by the millions. Anyone who has trees on their home or business site should be aware that any tree, native or planted, in a zone also used by people needs to be maintained over the years. Ownership of trees entails liability concerns, like it or not.
The soil is certainly hospitable to both trees and crops. The question is whether the rainfall and temperature is (or will be soon with climate change). It used to be very much so, but lately the northern/northwestern part has had heat and dryness that has really stressed certain native trees (loblolly pines and post oaks), and in central Houston the heat alone makes basically every vegetable but okra and sweet potatoes difficult to grow from June to September.
Well, the scientists is objectively false, considering the natural presence of trees in routinely hotter/drier climates in Texas.
We got about 15 minutes of rain yesterday afternoon in the Heights! Definitely not complaining.
What’s it been? 4 weeks since the region has had any meaningful rain? Soon to be 5-6 weeks it seems…
25 days for any level of rain in my general area.
2-3 weeks, depending on whether or not your area benefited from the isolated storms from last week (as well as some days like yesterday this week).
Why won’t this high pressure system go away? Why is it so entrenched in this area?
It hates us.
I don’t know. You never see it over, say, Northeast US. Supposedly it’s “atmospheric,” yet is always shows up in the same areas across various summers. If it’s not over Texas, then it’s closeby enough in the SW or SC/MS River Valley states such that cooler-than-normal temp anomalies get precluded.
Cold fronts (which are doom for ridges like these) don’t hit the SW or Texas often in the summer as much as the Northeast so they can live for MONTHS on end.
Houston weather is miserable.
Extended Forecast – continued miserable with no end in sight.
“Groundhog Day”, Houston edition.
Another miserable summer in the Houston swamp. Been here all of my life and you just never get use to it.
2011, The heavyweight champion of miserable summers in H-town. If this keeps up like this all month,
Than 2023 may scream ‘ yo Adrian, I did it!!!!’
Can anyone with access to Houston weather/climate data from 1883 to 2023 find out if we have ever had two consecutive “heat wave” summers in the past? If so, what years? I would guess it to be a very rare event. I would focus the search on the months June, July, and August to compare data. Thanks to any weather researchers out there.
This summer is not like 2011. That year was an extreme drought. This year would not be like this if not for climate change. It has been dry this summer, but not really that unusually dry (at least at my house). I don’t think we are really having two “2011-pattern” summers in a row, the crazy thing is that the heat is coming without any particularly extreme drought or particularly unusual lack of tropical rainfall (we did get two tropical waves earlier in the year).
We actually had a 3 year streak of heatwave type Summers. 1998, 1999, and 2000. 2000 was when Houston first reached it’s official hottest temperature on record at 109 on September 4th beating the previous record of 108 set back in 1909. The hottest during the actual Summer months was 107 on August 31st. 1987 and 1988 had some pretty hot temperatures over 100 degrees in Houston. It hit 102 degrees 2 days in a row in August 1988. 1962 and 1963 were 2 very hot summers, both saw temperatures over 100 degrees multiple times. Back to back very hot summers in SE Texas is fairly uncommon but not unheard of.
Imagine how different this summer would be without that initial ridge mid June.
Climate change is a real mother.