Houston’s weather story remains the same

It’s both a blessing and a curse as a meteorologist to live somewhere that you could almost set a clock to the weather each day. Predictability is great, but they say variety is the spice of life. Houston’s weather has been nothing if not persistent recently. And it looks to continue heading into the next several days.

Today

I don’t see a ton of difference between today and any other day we’ve had this week really. But there are enough subtle differences to make me fairly confident we see more showers around today than we did yesterday. Precipitable water (“PWAT,” a measurement of how much moisture is available in the atmosphere) is flat or down just a bit today versus where it was on Thursday in Houston. PWAT remains elevated north of The Woodlands and east into Louisiana today. While it could rain anywhere as we go into this afternoon, the best odds of cooling downpours will probably be near the coast or Galveston Bay this morning and east of I-45 or well north this afternoon. But regardless of where you’ll be in the Houston area, have an umbrella at the ready today.

 

Temperatures will range from the low to mid-90s where rain is minimal to the upper 80s or lower 90s where downpours are more persistent.

Weekend through Monday

So every day this weekend is going to have continued storm chances. We can’t say exactly how the timing is going to play out in terms of where and when specifically you’ll see showers. But, using some clues from the models, we can try and peg down some more likely periods.

Based on PWATs as discussed above, I think Sunday will be the stormier day this weekend, with pretty high storm risks lingering into Monday as well. Saturday certainly won’t be a dry day, but PWAT values are not that much higher than today, so I’d expect the most showers east of I-45 on Saturday afternoon. By Sunday, as those high PWATs spread toward Houston and vicinity, I expect numerous afternoon showers and storms.

 

Not everyone will be rained on this weekend, but as we’ve seen since last weekend, the dispersion of rainfall will be quite varied. Some folks may get just a couple drops, while others could see two to four inches of rain and some street flooding.

 

For those of you new to Houston summers, thanks for joining us. As a Northeast transplant, this took a couple years to get used to, but you learn to deal with it! Temperatures will probably be held down a bit due to increasing clouds this weekend, but we should still hit close to 90° in most spots, give or take a couple degrees.

Beyond Monday

The forecast is challenging beyond Monday. I’d expect storm chances to continue each afternoon, but they’ll likely begin to gradually drop off a bit as high pressure makes an attempt to expand into Texas. So don’t put the umbrella in storage, but hopefully you’ll be able to give it a day or two off by later next week. Of course, high pressure also likely means hotter temperatures. I don’t think we see anything extreme here, but some mid-90s might be back on the board by mid to late next week. Stay tuned.

Posted at 6:30 AM Friday by Matt