Good morning. Houston faces two more hot days before a weak front arrives to provide some relief, mostly in the form of cloudier skies, which will bring down temperatures, as well as producing scattered to widespread showers. After Thursday we should be done with high temperatures in the triple digits for awhile, which sounds great to me.

If we may, Matt and I would also like to take a moment this morning to thank all of the teachers in the greater Houston area. Kids have, or soon will, return to schools across the region and I know teachers have already been hard at work preparing for classes. You all have difficult jobs, particularly in dealing with parents and administrators, and we certainly appreciate your efforts to teach our children. We’re only sorry that we couldn’t give you better weather this summer.

Wednesday

Today’s going to be hot as the region bakes beneath a ridge of high pressure. Expect highs to range from the upper 90s to low 100s, with sunny skies. Some scattered showers are possible for northern areas, such as Montgomery County, but the rest of us will be dry. Winds will be light, out of the southwest, at around 5 mph. Skies will be partly cloudy overnight, with lows briefly dropping below 80 degrees in the city.

Thursday

This is going to be another hot day, with highs likely comparable to Wednesday for Houston, especially the southern half of the region. The big story of the day will be the weak front, which will drift southward during the day. At this point I anticipate showers and thunderstorms developing north of Houston during the late morning hours and pushing down into the metro area during the afternoon hours. These storms may reach the coast by around sunset, give or take a couple of hours. Showers and thunderstorms remain likely overnight, with area-wide rain chances at about 60 to 70 percent. These storms could produce briefly heavy rainfall, and damaging winds.

Friday

Rain chances on Friday will be governed to some degree by the extent to which storms on Thursday work over the atmosphere. If we get fairly decent rains on Thursday the atmosphere may be fairly stable, leading to more scattered showers on Friday. Fewer rains on Thursday probably would lead to more widespread showers on Friday. Anyway, look for highs to peak in the low 90s, with partly sunny skies. Overall rain accumulations should be greater this week for inland areas, with lesser totals near the coast.

Saturday, Sunday, and beyond

The weekend should see a mix of sunshine and clouds, with daily rain chances of about 50 percent. I don’t anticipate any washouts, but passing showers could briefly disrupt your outdoor activities. Highs will generally be in the low 90s, but I think some far inland areas could sneak into the mid- or upper 90s. Right now there are just no indications that the remainder of August will be insanely hot, nor even abnormally so.

We’re also looking toward the tropics at the area of low pressure Matt wrote about on Tuesday, but our overall thinking remains the same in terms of the overall low potential for a tropical storm to develop. This system may bring enough moisture to elevate our rain chances along the Upper Texas coast on Sunday and the early part of next week, and it may not. Regardless, we appear to be looking at a pattern of slightly cooler than normal weather, with highs mostly in the low 90s for next week. It’s difficult to beat that in late August, my friends.

After a summer of fishing for things to talk about in each week’s Eye on the Tropics, we’re quickly transitioning into peak season now, with a number of things to discuss. Today’s post will explain one system that should bring us some boosted rain chances heading into the weekend or next week, the chance of activity in the Atlantic, and what the pattern change expected over Texas will mean for us in terms of tropical risks.

Tropical outlook in a sentence

Activity should begin to ramp up this weekend and next week with a possible weak system in the Bay of Campeche, followed up by some additional tropical waves in the pipeline across the Atlantic worth watching.

Bay of Campeche & south Texas

This weekend saw tremendously beneficial rains in far south Texas. There may be more coming but who sees them remains a question. A tropical wave located over the southwest Caribbean is expected to move generally northwest over the next few days.

The National Hurricane Center is giving this about a 20% chance of developing into a depression or storm over the next 2 to 5 days. While a lot of folks will see this and be alarmed, there are reasons to think this system will struggle in terms of organization. For one, while wind shear was low in the Gulf as Invest 98L came crashing ashore on Sunday, wind shear in the western Caribbean and Bay of Campeche is not low. It’s fairly robust, and based on most model data I’ve looked at, some elements of shear are going to persist around this system until it comes ashore. My hope is that this will cap the ceiling on intensity potential.

The other reason not to really worry is that the pattern is going to likely keep it from coming up the Texas coast. It will track toward northern Mexico or the Rio Grande Valley as a disorganized tropical low, depression, or low-end storm. No credible modeling shows anything worse than that right now.

While South Texas saw a heck of a lot of rain from Invest 98L, where the rain falls this time around will be a little trickier to project. If the system can organize some, heavier rain is possible again in South Texas, while scattered storms would impact the Houston area at times. If the system remains rather disorganized, it’s possible that South Texas will see limited rain, but the bulk of the moisture coming from this wave will end up entrained in a cold front stalled over north Texas, bringing heavier rain to the Panhandle, DFW area, and into northern Louisiana and Arkansas. In that case, again Houston would see just scattered storms.

So for now, while I wouldn’t worry about this one specifically, I would continue monitoring it to see how rain chances will evolve.

Atlantic waves

Behind this wave, there are a few others in the deeper Atlantic.

Modeling is showing a lot more noise in the Atlantic from these waves now, meaning more ensemble model members are developing some of them. However, there’s not a whole lot of signal in the noise. That’s both good news and bad news. It’s bad because it doesn’t give us anything to hone in on just yet. So, all we can say is “Hey, the tropics are going to be active in late August.” Bold statement! But it’s good because there’s always a chance that the lack of signal indicates the environment will remain somewhat hostile toward tropical development. We’ll continue watching this to see if there’s anything to latch onto in the coming days, but as of now there’s nothing to hang our hats on.

Does the pattern change mean a change in Texas’s tropics risk?

We’ll close today’s note with a quick comment about the big picture pattern. For most of summer, Texas has been shielded by high pressure over the southern Plains and Central United States. This is why June and July were so hot.

That high pressure system acted to basically keep us hot, dry, and protected from any Gulf threats all season. The pattern is changing now, rather dramatically. The new look will feature high pressure mostly anchored in the northern Rockies or western Canada, as well as near Bermuda, with a rather healthy trough in the Eastern United States.

This means a couple things. For one, we’re no longer really “shielded” from the Gulf. So anything that can get into the Gulf will be apt to gain a bit more latitude than it would have back in June, July, or early August. That certainly doesn’t guarantee that we’re at risk for storms, but it has made us more vulnerable. That said, the other element to this is that the trough in the East *may* act to help “pick up” Atlantic systems more easily. In other words, the stuff coming off Africa may be more likely to get lifted north earlier, which favors either out to sea tracks or up the East Coast tracks. So our focus would probably be less on long-tracking storms from Africa and remain on systems like 98L, this week’s system coming out of the Caribbean, or anything that can spin up on the tail end of old fronts. So, this is a good news/bad news sort of scenario for us. The key points I want you take away from this post today are:

• The tropics are finally coming alive, as is usually the case in late August.
• The main system to watch right now, a tropical wave in the Caribbean, will likely track toward far south Texas or Mexico this weekend and increase our rain chances some.
• Additional waves have the potential to develop farther out in the Atlantic next week, but none looks like a slam dunk just yet.
• The general pattern change we will see in Texas is going to leave us open to local, “homebrew” Gulf threats, but there is a chance that the pattern in the Eastern U.S. will favor deep Atlantic systems turning out to sea or perhaps getting closer to the East Coast.
• With the season ramping up now, it’s time to start checking in once each day or two to see what’s happening and make your final checks on emergency kits and plans while we grind through things into September.

This may or may not be our last weekly post on the tropics, as we may have enough to discuss daily now. Regardless, stay with us for updates on anything of note in the days ahead.

The forecast for Houston is pretty straightforward: Houston will see a few more very hot days before a weak front arrives on Thursday to increase cloud cover and rain chances, and bring down temperatures a bit. Then, we are likely to see near-normal to below-normal temperatures into at least the middle of next week. Finally, the tropics may be waking up.

Tuesday

Here comes the heat. With high pressure continuing to build over the region we will see highs in the mid- to upper-90s across much of the Houston region today, with inland areas such as College Station and Huntsville likely hitting triple digits. Rain chances are, at best, about 10 percent with mostly sunny skies. Winds will be light, out of the south or southeast, at 5 to 10 mph.

Wednesday and Thursday

The heat will peak on these days, with 100-degree temperatures possible across much of the region, except for the immediate coast. Sunny skies will prevail for much of that time, but things will begin to change later on Thursday as a weak front approaches the region. This is not a classical fall cold front, mind you, when there is a distinct wind shift followed by an influx of colder and drier air. We really don’t get such fronts in August, as it’s just too early. Rather, this front will mostly perturb the atmosphere, allowing for rising air and the formation of clouds. This will, in turn, help increase rain chances and start to hold down daily highs. But because the front is unlikely to push into Houston until Thursday afternoon or so, that day is still probably going to bring triple-digit-hot for most of the area. Rain chances start to tick up Thursday afternoon or evening, likely in the form of scattered showers.

Friday

This day will probably have the best chance of rain this week, above 50 percent for the region. The additional cloud cover should hold high temperatures in the low-90s for much of the area.

Saturday and Sunday

The aforementioned front is basically going to move down to the coast on Thursday, get hung up, and eventually dissipate. Nevertheless its remains should continue to help produce partly cloudy skies and decent rain chances on the order of 30 to 50 percent through the weekend. Accumulations across much of the area will vary from 0.25 to 2.0 inches, with the highest accumulations likely to the east of Houston. Highs will likely remain in the low 90s.

Next week

Our weather next week will be guided, to some extent, by tropical moisture streaming in from the Gulf of Mexico. Matt will have more in our weekly tropics update later this morning, but there is potential for a tropical wave currently in the Caribbean Sea to move into the Southern Gulf of Mexico toward the end of this week. There, it could start to develop into a tropical system. This is not something I think we probably need to be directly concerned about, but the system could influence our weather early next week with increased moisture and the potential for more rain showers. The bottom line is that we’re now in the middle of August, and watching the tropics closely. More from Matt, soon.

Good morning. After several days of on-and-off showers due to an infusion of tropical moisture, high pressure will begin to reassert its influence over our weather today, and this will push our temperatures back above normal for August. The heat will peak on Wednesday before a weak front brings some relief in the form of clouds, showers, and slightly lower daytime temperatures. Miraculously, we may then be looking at a week or so of near- or slightly below-normal temperatures for August in Houston. Yes, please.

On a completely unrelated note, I’m participating in the Bay Area “Dancing with the Stars” event on September 10 that will be held at the Doyle Convention Center in Texas City. I am not a dancer by an means, but I’ve been working hard with my partner for the event, Nassau Bay City Secretary Sandra Ham, to fix that. By some miracle, Mariel Blain of Dance Visions has taught us a more than 2-minute tango. In a few weeks we will compete on stage with five other couples to raise money for the Bay Area Alliance for Youth and Families. You can find out more information here, and if you’re so inclined you can support your favorite couple by text, or buying a table.

Monday

Today will bring partly sunny skies to the region, with temperatures generally topping out in the mid-90s for much of the Houston region (far inland areas will be hotter). This is somewhat of a transition day, as high pressure is still building over the area. As a result there may still be a 10 or 15 percent chance of rain, but consider yourself lucky if you see a brief shower. Winds will be light, out of the southwest, at 5 to 10 mph.

Tuesday and Wednesday

With high pressure fully in control we’ll see highs jump into the upper 90s to 100 degrees for much of the region. Wednesday looks like the hottest day of the week, when much of the metro area should reach triple digits. Rain chances will be low to nil for the region.

Thursday and Friday

Thursday will probably start out hot again, but the aforementioned weak front should push into the Houston area during the daytime, bringing clouds and an elevated chance of rain through Friday or Friday night. Much of the area will probably see 0.5 to 2 inches of rain during this period, but that is a general guess at this point rather than a high confidence forecast. Thursday will be hotter ahead of the front, but highs on Friday may top out at around 90 degrees. The front will not result in appreciably lower dew points, but it will at least take the sting out of daytime highs.

Saturday, Sunday, and beyond

High pressure should not reassert itself this weekend, or heading into the weekend. As a result, I think we’re looking at a fairly sustained stretch of weather in the low 90s for this weekend and beyond, with decent 30 to 40 percent daily rain chances. This could be weather like we were supposed to have in June, but did not. Either way, for the historically hottest time of the year, we’ll take anything we can get.