Some of you have lamented the early demise of winter this year—Houston hasn’t had a low temperature below 47 degrees this month—and I don’t have any better news this week. Temperatures are going to warm up into the upper 80s on Monday and Tuesday, possibly reaching 90 degrees on Monday in some locations. Here’s a quick discussion of why:
An area of low pressure over Nebraska will direct winds over Texas to flow from the southwest later on Sunday and through Monday. In the chart below winds (blue hues depict a stronger flow) are shown about 3,000 feet above the surface of the Earth.
In this case the winds are flowing from Mexico and south Texas up into central and eastern Texas. And this is important because air at the level of about 3,000 to 5,000 feet above the surface in Mexico is quite warm, as we can see in the chart below showing temperatures at this layer.
So what does this all mean? The air at and above the surface will support the transport of drier, much warmer air into the region on Monday and Tuesday. This will give us a couple of mostly sunny, hot days, with nighttime temperatures in the low 60s.
Now if you’re on Spring Break and want to hit the beach, this weather will be outstanding for that. I mean, Monday will be very much like an early summer day, so I’d plan on getting to Galveston fairly early to be the crowds.
But if you’re dreading the onset of June in Houston, this early week reminder will be an all too early taste of what’s coming. Fortunately we’ll cool off some by Wednesday, and quite a bit more by the weekend.
I sat outside soaking up the sun and loved every minute of it. So much so that I am going to do it again today.
Will you be posting on whatever happened (or didn’t happen) with the El Niño winter? Thank you (and Matt) so much for all your great and valuable work!!
Yes. Been waiting for the site stability issues to be resolved before getting into more content like this.
Please do what you can to keep us out of the 90’s until July…thanks!
When I retire, I’m outta here pretty quick for some place about 10-15 degrees colder year round. No 90+ weeks on end in summer and an inch or two of snow a couple of times each winter. You know, real seasons. Seasons other than unbearably hot and not unbearable hot. Not to mention a city that actually has a pro hockey team (thanks a bunch, Les!).