In brief: Houston begins a slow transition back to a wetter weather pattern today, with higher rain chances tomorrow and Friday. No severe weather is expected at this time, but we cannot completely rule it out. It will remain fairly hot and humid, but “less hot” weather and even better rain chances may arrive early next week.

Hot weather will continue today, but shower chances begin to increase, and those chances will stay with us into next week. As we try to get back to a sense of normalcy after Hurricane Beryl, Eric and I just want to highlight and thank our partners at Reliant for their continued support of our site, as well as the community. Reliant and NRG just announced a $2 million contribution for near-term and longer-term Hurricane Beryl relief and assistance, including charitable contributions, customer assistance, and more. We thank them for that and their continued support and partnership with Space City Weather!

Today

Conditions have been fairly dormant in the rain department the last couple days. That will begin to change today. We already have some showers offshore this morning, as well as near the coast in Galveston and Chambers Counties. Look for additional scattered showers and storms to pop up with daytime heating today. It will still be plenty hot and humid, so expect highs in the mid-90s.

The added moisture will actually make today feel more uncomfortable than recent days as well. We still have about 50,000 customers without power in the area, so it will be another difficult day for those folks. We would strongly encourage continuing to check on those without power and ensure they have a cool place to go. The combination of heat and humidity will probably make today feel the worst that it has since Beryl.

Thursday and Friday

Both days will carry a pretty healthy chance of showers and thunderstorms. Storms will drop in from the north tomorrow afternoon and evening. Additional scattered storms will be with us Friday. While we are not currently highlighted in any severe weather risks for tomorrow or Friday these types of north to south moving storms can occasionally deliver a rogue severe storm or two. As I mused in the comments to someone yesterday, my five year old and I look at radar each evening (his doing, not mine!), and I’m always struck by how many random storms in the South can become severe in summertime. My point being: We aren’t highlighting severe weather risk the next few days, but it’s entirely possible we see something isolated stick out from the overall mess of showers and storms.

Highs will be in the mid-90s ahead of Thursday’s storms and near 90 on Friday with lows in the 70s.

Weekend

Both days will feature sun and clouds. We’ll probably see morning showers or storms near the coast spreading inland each late morning or afternoon. Not everyone will see rain, but many of us will, though hopefully it doesn’t totally ruin outdoor plans. Highs will be near 90 with lows in the 70s.

Monday and Tuesday

Rain chances increase again here as a more vigorous upper level system moves closer. This should lead to numerous to widespread showers and thunderstorms Monday and/or Tuesday with highs in the 80s.

Lows will remain in the 70s, as a high humidity air mass remains in control despite the cooler daytimes.

Rain chances should slowly settle down and temps slowly increase again by next weekend. All told, we’re probably looking at a widespread 1 to 3 inches of rainfall through next week with higher totals near the coast and lesser totals west and southwest of Houston.

In brief: We’ll have one more pretty quiet day before rain chances begin to increase. This will lead to cooler weather and healthy, daily chances of rain beginning this weekend and continuing into much of next week. It won’t feel terrible for midsummer.

We managed 94 degrees at Bush yesterday and 93 at Hobby as fairly typical mid-summer weather continues. We’ve got one more day of it, and then the rumblings of change begin.

Today

Copy and paste yesterday’s weather for the most part.

Wednesday

Look for the day to start as a repeat of Monday and Tuesday, but by afternoon, shower chances will begin to increase. Scattered showers and storms are likely. Call it about a 30 to 40 percent chance or so. I might say that the highest chances will be south and east of Houston tomorrow. We’ll check in on this obviously tomorrow morning. Highs should peak in the low to mid 90s with lows in the 70s.

Thursday

We will have an additional 40 to 50 percent chance of afternoon thunderstorms. Prior to that, expect a mix of sun and clouds with highs in the low-90s. Lows will be in the mid-70s.

Friday

Here’s where I’d begin to expect scattered to more numerous showers and thunderstorms and some locally heavy rain. Temperatures may struggle to get to 90 on Friday, depending on the exact coverage and timing of storms.

Weekend

Both Saturday and Sunday should see scattered showers and thunderstorms each afternoon. All of this will be caused by a cool front that should stall out, or really kind of wash out in our area. The location of the stall will help determine the exact focal point of storminess into the weekend, but most areas should see at least some rain between Thursday and Sunday and some areas will see several rounds of it as well.

Next week

It’s too soon to get super specific, but we will be seeing numerous shower and storm chances next week, at least through midweek before perhaps easing up some toward next weekend. We will probably have multiple days with highs failing to reach 90 degrees due to cloud cover and rain. Despite this, there will be little relief from the humidity which should remain high. So nighttime lows will continue to remain in the 70s. But the periodic rain and storms and the overall cooler air mass should help lead daytimes to feel not terrible for late July.

We may also get a round or two of Saharan dust next week, and any rain can aid in minimizing those air quality impacts a bit too.

In brief: Typical summer weather will be with us to start the week, but rain chances increase Wednesday afternoon and especially Thursday and Friday as a change in the pattern over Texas leads to potentially cooler temperatures and wetter weather.

Good morning, and we hope the situation has improved for you this weekend. I know there are still hundreds of thousands without power, a situation that remains frustrating and disappointing all around. We have had some modest fortune with the weather the last few days, with officially 90 on Saturday and 93 on Sunday. Last year this weekend was 99 and 98 degrees respectively. I’m certainly not trying to lessen the real complaints of extreme discomfort so many have endured, but we are lucky this isn’t even worse.

As we attempt to recover some degree of normalcy this week, the weather will stay pretty normal for July as well, but that may begin to change late week — and not in the hotter direction either.

Today and Tuesday

Today and tomorrow will essentially be cut from the same cloth: Look for sun, clouds, and the requisite 20 percent chance of afternoon thunderstorms as the sea breeze nudges inland. It will probably be a touch hotter today and tomorrow than we saw this weekend, with low to mid-90s. Heat will be on the higher side, and for those of you still without power and for the line workers trying to get you back, it will be important to take it as easy as possible, stay hydrated, and catch a break in some AC whenever possible. Here is a list of Houston area cooling centers and shelters if you need locations.

Wednesday

Rain chances will probably nudge up closer to 40 or 50 percent on Wednesday afternoon. As high pressure amplifies over the Four Corners region, we end up on the “downstream” side of that, where disturbances can swing through and help enhance our rain chances a bit. Highs will be in the 90s with higher humidity. Low temps continue in the upper-70s.

Thursday and beyond

The trickiest parts of the forecast come late this week. A rather aggressive trough in the upper atmosphere for July and potential cool front will likely start to infringe on Southeast Texas. For us that means much higher rain chances and perhaps somewhat cooler temperatures. For now, expect highs near 90 or in the low-90s. But rain chances will bump up to around 50 to 60 percent. Some of the rain could be locally heavy late week.

We’ll keep track of this through the week to see how it all evolves, but have the umbrella very handy Thursday and Friday.

Beyond that, the odds of below average temperatures actually go up a good bit for next weekend and a decent chunk of next week too. Now, below average temperatures in late July in Houston aren’t open the windows and air out the joint stuff. However, this will be welcome I think after our recent bout of heat and minimal electricity.

We will take what we can get. This will likely also come with continued daily rain chances. Last summer this is not.

Tropics

A quick note on the tropics only to say breathe easy and that it looks quiet for the next 7 to 10 days. We’ll have some additional color at The Eyewall on this later today.

In brief: Today’s post offers some thoughts about the need for a reckoning with power distribution in the greater Houston area, and greater resiliency given the conditions we regularly experience. In terms of a forecast, we will see additional thunderstorm chances today and Saturday before a hotter and calmer pattern begins Sunday.

Is this CenterPoint’s ERCOT moment?

Three and a half years ago nearly everyone in Texas had a bogeyman for the power issues that bedeviled the state during the Valentine’s Freeze of 2021. More than 4.5 million homes and businesses were left without power, and at least 250 people were killed directly or indirectly by the freeze. Property damages in the state approached $200 billion when “rolling” blackouts never actually rolled. It was a disaster—both natural and manmade.

The underlying issue was power generation, in particular the failure of power plants under extremely cold conditions, and an insufficient supply of natural gas for power plants. The reasons for this lack of preparation are complex, and partly political. The bottom line is that the organization tasked with supplying the vast majority of the state’s electricity and managing the grid, ERCOT, received the majority of the blame. This led to a reckoning for ERCOT and, at least theoretically, reforms that will prevent future issues. So far, so good.

The failure of Houston’s power grid during the derecho in May and, most recently Beryl, is a distribution issue rather than a generation issue. There was plenty of power available, it just could not be delivered to residents. There are three electricity distributors in the Houston region: CenterPoint, Texas-New Mexico, and Entergy. However by far the largest distributor is CenterPoint, which has drawn the lion’s share of angst and anger since the outages began early on Monday morning. Let’s face it, being without electricity, especially in the middle of July in Houston, is absolutely miserable.

We have been pretty clear here at Space City Weather that the region should not have experienced such widespread outages. Beryl knocked out electricity to more customers than Hurricane Ike did in 2008. At Beryl’s peak, 85 percent of CenterPoint customers lost electricity. This matters because Ike was much larger and more powerful than Beryl, and brought hurricane-force sustained winds across large chunks of the Houston metro area. I’m not saying Beryl wasn’t a nasty storm, but its winds were quantitatively, and significantly, less than those of Ike.

I am far from an expert on the distribution infrastructure that delivers power into homes. It is complex, and I salute the linemen working long hours to restore service. However, Houston’s electricity distribution system is not working. It is failing us. Many residents have now experienced two prolonged outages in three months. I realize that CenterPoint can no more control the weather than I can. But after Hurricane Ike our system should have been hardened for future similar (and lesser events, like Beryl). I realize there are no easy solutions, but there are things we should be studying and the implementing, such as concrete poles, underground lines, microgrids, and other ideas.

Whatever company officials and politicians say in the coming days, the harsh reality is that our transmission system failed the Beryl test. Badly. And if we do nothing it will happen again and again.

Just as ERCOT faced a reckoning after the great freeze, our distributors need a reckoning after Beryl. The status quo, and political leaders who enable it going forward, are unacceptable. What we have seen this week is unsustainable for a city that bills itself as the energy capital of the world.

Friday and Saturday

Parts of the Houston area saw rain showers on Thursday, and some of these developed into fairly strong thunderstorms. A few locations just west of downtown picked up 1 to 1.5 inches of rainfall. This overall pattern of plenty of moisture in the atmosphere and an unstable boundary will persist today and Saturday. Therefore we are likely to see a similar pattern for the next two days, with showers developing near the coast later this morning and migrating inland this afternoon. Unfortunately, a few areas within these stronger storms will see lighting and briefly strong winds.

The upside to this pattern is partly to mostly cloudy skies, with cooler temperatures. Highs both days will be around 90 degrees, with light winds from the southeast. Overnight lows will generally drop into the upper 70s.

Sunday

By the second half of the weekend, high pressure should expand into Southeast Texas, setting the stage for a warmer pattern. We can expect mostly sunny skies and high temperatures in the mid-90s. Rain chances will be low, perhaps 20 percent, but not non-existent.

Next week

Hot, full-on summer weather arrives next week and our region will need electricity fully restored to cope. We are looking at highs generally in the mid- to upper-90s for most of the area, with mostly sunny skies. The first half of the week should be rain free, although chances for some scattered showers arrive during the second half of the week. Rain chances may improve further by next weekend as some sort of dying front approaches the region. We shall see.

To the extent possible, have a great weekend everyone. After a long period of activity, this site will go quiet on Saturday and Sunday, and then following our normal schedule of daily posting next week.