Houston has had some hot days this week—with highs of 90 and 91 degrees—but we’ve been saved by some pleasant mornings and especially evenings when drier air has felt pretty good. I hate to be a Grinchy forecaster, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to take that away from you, too.
The “dewpoint” temperature offers a good indication of how dry the air feels. Specifically the greater the difference between the dewpoint and the actual temperature, the lower the humidity. In the graphic below I’ve plotted the temperature (blue) and dewpoint (red) for the last three nights at 8pm at Hobby Airport, and for the next three nights.
As you can see, we had a pretty nice delta on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights. As you can also see, that difference between the actual temperature and dewpoint is going to go away beginning this evening. Trust me, in the hour before and after sunset, you’ll feel it. And probably not in a good way.
Wednesday and Thursday
Not a whole lot of change in our weather, aside from the modest increase in dewpoint temperatures noted above. We’ll continue to see sunny days, with high temperatures around 90 degrees, and overnight temperatures in the upper 60s to 70 degrees. Our rain chances are precisely zero.
Friday and Saturday
More or less the same, with a continued uptick in humidity and overnight low temperatures sliding into the low 70s for Houston. Rain chances remain near zero, but I won’t entirely rule out a few isolated showers. A capping inversion should keep a lid on most, if not all precipitation.
Mother’s Day
No real change. The day should start off in the low 70s, with clear skies, and warm into the low 90s. There’s the barest chance of a few spotty showers along the coast, but I doubt it. Outdoor celebrations should be good to go as long as you have some shade. Well, a lot of shade. And probably a fan or two for mom.
Monday and beyond
Rain chances will probably improve some next week, but perhaps only marginally so. Most likely we’ll remain hot, with highs in the range of 90 degrees. When we get some better clarity on when it’s next likely to rain, we’ll definitely share it.
Eric…question…
Does 10% chance of rain mean nearly 100% chance that 10% of Houston will see precipitation, or does it mean that there is a 10% chance that somewhere in metropolitan Houston will see rain?
Hopefully Eric will answer, but this is the way I think of it: Think first about what data sources forecasters have to work with… they basically have stations over an area reporting “how much rain they received”. So, I believe that from experience they have gained in the past, they say “well, when the weather looked like this before, 10% of stations in the given area reported ‘some rain’ “. And so they have this rather quantifiable “number of stations” expected to report “some rain” as 10%. I don’t think it’s any more precise than that.
Forget the Ike Dike. We need a Humidity Dike.
🙂 Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh ! The “90-squared” weather is upon us. 🙂 I personally would kill for just 2 days of below 80 deg highs in August.
Like a hurricane?
No hurricanes either!
:-)These “weather guys” need to use their great powers to bring us sub-80 weather in August while maintaining high upper level shear to kill the tropical systems before they get anywhere near any land areas! 🙂