Steel thyselves, my friends, for one more go with extreme heat. As high pressure gets stacked up over the region, we’re going to have one more fling with temperatures substantially above 100 degrees over the next two days before we (slowly) start to moderate into somewhat more civilized weather. Next week should start to look more like a typical late summer pattern, with highs in the low- to mid-90s and much improved rain chances. Nighttime lows should also start to feel a bit cooler as well.
Thursday
Highs today will range from about 100 to 105 degrees across much of the region, with only a very slight southerly wind. Skies will be sunny, and a heat advisory is in place for this afternoon and evening. There is perhaps a 10 to 20 percent chance of rain for inland areas later today, but I would have very low expectations for that to occur.
Friday
Our heat will peak on Friday, and this will be a scorcher. Much of the area will likely reach high temperatures of around 105 degrees, with ample sunshine. There are two things to watch for. Along with the heat we’re going to see healthy wildfire chances. And secondly, there is an upper-level disturbance that will be most prominent in North Texas, but could affect our weather as well.
By late Friday evening it is possible that this disturbance drives some sort of line of storms down into the Houston metro area, likely reaching the city just before or after midnight. Not all of our modeling is showing this to happen, but given the potential for instability in the atmosphere I think it’s possible. In any case, it’s something we should have a better handle on in tomorrow morning’s forecast update.
Saturday and Sunday
The weekend forecast is still going to be hot, don’t get me wrong. Highs on Saturday will likely be in the upper 90s to 100 degrees with mostly sunny skies. But we’re going to see a pretty decent chance of showers, whether it comes early in the morning with the aforementioned disturbance, or later in the day. Then I would expect highs on Sunday to peak in the mid-90s, with mostly sunny skies and another healthy chance (maybe 40 or 50 percent) chance of rainfall.
Next week
The forecast is still uncertain for next week, but I think it’s likely that the combination of a weak front and high pressure moving out west that we’re going to see highs mostly in the low 90s by the middle to end of next week. Nighttime lows should also finally start dropping into the 70s, with some slightly less humid air. Add in some pretty decent daily rain chances, and you’ve got yourself the region’s most moderate week of weather since summer began in Houston, I don’t know, what seems like 15 years ago.
With that said, these next two days are going to be brutally hot, so be sure and take care of yourselves, your family, and your neighbors.
Thanks for all you do. Greatly appreciated.
One suggestion to do in the future to deal with Houston’s energy issue, Get rid of dependence on ‘green” energy for highly populated areas . They are the one’s which fail in our region. And , eliminate ERCT and leave responsibility for overseeing energy with PUC & Governor. jmho.
I was not aware of a significant problem with energy failure in Houston.
Me neither. I suspect the previous poster is aping what the RNP says.
Me as well. Only heard about it watching 13 as I got ready for work this morning. It was also the first day in a long time I never checked ERCOT’s web site. No email from Reliant or CenterPoint. Nothing on TV while I was at the gym after work. I could have returned to a dark home wondering why.
You know, we never had to put up with this nonsense in the 80s or 90s, 00s. This is what happens when your state refuses to invest in infrastructure. We tend to forget about infrastructure until we suddenly don’t have it.
The grid is never solely dependent on green energy. The failures currently (as in right now) are with Natural Gas, and again its a maintenance issue. ERCOT and our State Government doesn’t want to “invest” in maintenance and upgrades to the system.
Also, ERCOT is currently subject to oversight by the PUC and the Texas Legislature. Eliminating ERCOT doesn’t solve anything. The simple answer is to just connect to the national grid. Abbott and his administration refuses to do so.
Exactly.
One suggestion for this is to have Texas tie in with the rest of the county. Also check the ERCOT usage, green energy is a large portion of the electricity generated here. ERCOT is a massive issue, but until a government body forces plants to do Maintenace and winterizing / “summerizing” we will continue to struggle. If you really want a solution to heat island effects and that impact on the usage, we need to be forcing apartments / parking garages / warehouses to do living roofs. A foot of soil and native plants would be a huge impact on out flooding issues and also help give Houston a more reasonable ability to cool at night, not to mention helping birds, and honeybees who are struggling bigtime. But that’s too “green” for anyone to support here.
“But that’s too “green” for anyone to support here”
I support it but I also recognize the mindless nitwits who run the state.
Green roofs are not just “that simple” and present huge engineering and maintenance headaches. What you’re proposing is much more than a pool across an entire roof and even that is a huge added expense with additional structural considerations, increasing the overhead and therefore price of housing, services, and businesses. In fact, there was a project of doing green roofs at NASA and they found it so prohibitively expensive they had to scrap the project, especially taking ADA and other access requirements into consideration.
It’s been 62 days without rain. That would be a lot of extra irrigation and demand on our municipal water system as well.
I agree with tying into the rest of the grid, with a quick “disconnect switch” in case of an attack on the grid. Sometimes people around here are so proud of being Texans they forget that we are firstly Americans who live in Texas. What’s that about “how quickly the proud have fallen?”
We are not firstly Americans.
Energy issues aren’t unique to Texas and tying in with the rest of the country simply won’t work. We have solar and wind farms all over the state of New Mexico, a lot of that power is transmitted to states to our west while we have outages so regular that you could set a clock to them. All this after the Four Corners coal plant was shuttered. People love their hybrid vehicles I don’t understand why a hybrid model of renewable and fossil fuel is never even rationally discussed as a complete energy plan, it seems a no brainer.
Am I fan of ERCOT? No. Learning what they are paying to bitcoin companies to keep the energy flowing this summer has blow my mind. That said, one has to admit that given the record setting summer and the record setting energy usage, they are doing better than I though they would.
Unfortunately you got bad info from your sources Robert
Love your humor as in, “Steel thyselves!”
My Steel is melting unfortunately…
Jet streams can’t melt steel heat domes
Hi
Thank you for your factual updates.
I agree with Allen and fix the infrastructure and grid.
You’re funny 😊
🌬⚘
I’m not exactly sure what is causing the greater heat for Friday compared to today, assuming the models aren’t just overdoing things?
Because while the ridge is present, it looks more centered over Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas rather than directly overhead Eastern Texas.
Compressional heating ahead of the approaching weak front? Higher dew point air drawn into the region?
But higher dewpoints (more moisture) would keep the temps lower?
Now compressional heating is definitely a culprit. But none of the modeled surface winds (global nor mesoscale so far) look focused on SE Texas anymore than other areas of the state: at least, not to the form as seen on the August 27th event.
I almost forgot: storms and their outflows (including timing and location both today and tomorrow). Those are definite wildcards for sure.
I keep repeating in my head, “At least it’s not 109. At least it’s not 109.” It seems to be helping. 🙂
There has to be some sort of threshold to ensure that we avoid a “jinx”
Make electricity a truly public utility: remove the profit motive. Then connect the Texas grid to the rest of the US.
As others have said: “Thank you for the humorous updates through this drought/heat ridge time.”
The end is kind of nigh and this year’s Fall Day should be welcomed with shouts of jubilee. Maybe even a rain dance or two.
You had me a ‘improved rain chances’.
This year has been an absolute nightmare. I have never in the 70 years living here have experienced a summer this brutal. The winters have been very severe these past three years too. Houston has extremes but they are usually years apart, not all together like this. It started with Harvey. Im glad I dont have much time left to deal with constant extreme weather. I feel bad for the new generations that will. Move further north if you can.
I talked with three coworkers about the energy emergency, Two were like me and didn’t hear about it until seeing the news this morning. The third didn’t hear about it until I asked him.
ERCOT and the providers need to get the word out better.
I’ve received many emails asking to conserve between certain times of certain days. It seems like your energy provider needs to send out similar emails.
At this point, I’ll just take an overcast day. I miss clouds. I miss gray. I miss rain. I’m sitting at my office and it just looks so darn hot outside. I’m hopeful it ends but the conditioning I’ve received this summer tells me it will never end.
Thank you very much for helping my family keep updated on weather issues, we greatly appreciate it.
My 20 year old A / C unit is still working,this weather is darn depressing,.Well still patiently waiting for a real COLD Snap.