Perhaps you’re not impressed with the region’s rare mid-summer cool front, but anyone who knows what August feels like in Houston will be pleasantly surprised when stepping outside this morning. Dewpoints in the northern half of Houston have generally fallen below 70 degrees, which is remarkably low for this sultry time of year. These pleasant mornings and evenings will linger for a few more days, and daytimes should be moderate as well with increasing rain chances. Essentially, for most of the rest of this week, it will be like late May or early June, only it’s actually the dead of summer. That may not seem like much, but August is typically so consistently hot and humid, that this weather is kind of amazing.
Tuesday
After a cool, dry start today should see partly sunny skies, with highs in the low 90s. Today’s probably the last day of the week that most of Houston will not see any rain.
Wednesday through Friday
As a very strong ridge of high pressure builds over the western United States, and lower pressure over the east, the Houston region will kind of be stuck in the middle. But that’s better than being under the ridge, which is just going to bake the western United States. Places like Portland, Ore., are likely to see highs above 100 degrees.
Here in Houston, the combination of Gulf moisture and some upper-level disturbances should be enough to bring us partly to mostly cloudy days, with intermittent showers and thunderstorms. I don’t think we’re going to see enough rain to raise significant flooding issues, but most areas should see 1 to 3 inches through the weekend I’d guess. And for August, our temperatures will be amazing. Look for highs in the mid-80s to 90 degrees, and overnight lows in the mid-70s, with slightly lower humidity.
Saturday, Sunday, and beyond
Really, I don’t see much change going into the weekend. Temperatures will still be on the moderate side, and rain chances will continue with perhaps about half of the area seeing at least some light precipitation. Perhaps by Sunday the area should dry out a little bit, but I’m not making an guarantees.
Right now, yet another cool front seems likely to approach the region and stall out this weekend. This suggests that next week should start out in more or less a similar fashion to this one. We might even get all of the way into mid-August without a high in the mid-90s. Now that would be amazing.
Posted at 7:05am CT on Tuesday by Eric
Why are you ignoring the dangerous ozone level?
I had to do a double take this AM looking at my PWS! 73.6 in Cypress this AM!
Now THAT’s how you start August off right there.
in meteorologese, is there a difference between “partly cloudy” and “partly sunny”? I noticed both terms were use in today’s post.
No, there is not. However, generally partly sunny is used during the day, and partly cloudy is used at night. For obvious reasons.
How about “partly starly” at night?
“Partly mooney (looney?)” does sound kinda dorky!
The moon is not always out at night anyway.
So if you called it Partly Moony, would you get arrested for indecent exposure?
Eric,
Any comment on my comment about bringing back some “coolness” from the Pacific NW?
Well we do appreciate it. It seems like you’ve also brought back some of that NW precipitation with you, too.
It looks like we have swapped weather with the PNW!
Eric and Matt, you do a fantastic job with Space City Weather! I read it every day.
Well, after Eric rightfully chastised me for “cruelly” reporting last week that temps in the Olympia, WA area were at a “sweltering 84 F max (55 at night),” I jokingly promised to bring some “coolness” back with me. Well our flight arrived at Intercontinental around 8 PM last night (July 31!!!) and “VOILA” — “Houston is about to have an amazing week of weather for August.” Now, if only I’m so lucky on the WA Lotto and Powerball tickets I bought at the Seattle airport yesterday . . . . .
Meanwhile, my relatives back in Olympia will see the rare summer use of their A/C system. Naturally, they now are mad at me for sending normal Houston weather out to them.
A couple years ago when returning a rental car at Seattle, the rental company employees were complaining how “hot” it was when the 3 PM temperature was 87 F.