Good morning. Houston faces three rather hot days, with high temperatures in the upper 90s to 100 degrees, before a pattern change heading into the weekend. Friday and Saturday should bring fairly healthy rain chances, although showers will likely still be hit or miss for the region. Most of next week should bring typical August-like weather.

Tuesday

High pressure is starting to build back over the region, and will do so for the next three days. If you’ve been paying attention during June and July of this summer, you’ll understand what that means: sunny skies and hot temperatures. Highs today will range from the low 100s for areas well inland, to upper 90s in the city of Houston to the mid 90s right along the coast. Rain chances are probably about 10 to 20 percent, with the slightly better chances near the coast this afternoon. Winds will be slight, out of the south at 5 to 10 mph. Overnight lows will once again only fall to around 80 degrees.

Wednesday and Thursday

More of the same. Wednesday will probably be the hottest day of the week, but the difference will be negligible.

Friday and Saturday

The pattern changes toward the end of the week, as high pressure moves off, and the region opens up to an influx of tropical moisture. It looks like the bulk of this moisture will remain east of Houston, over the Beaumont and Port Arthur areas, but I still think we’ll see scattered, if not widespread showers. With partly sunny skies, look for highs to generally only reach the low 90s for much of the region.

Sunday

There probably will be a little more sunshine, and fewer rain showers, by Sunday. Look for highs in the mid-90s.

Next week

As of now, next week appears likely to bring classic August-like weather to Houston, which is to say sunny skies, highs in the mid-90s, and a smattering of rain chances driven primarily by the afternoon sea breeze.

Welcome to August, everyone. With an average temperature of 88.1 degrees, this month beat out 1980 (87.5 degrees) as the warmest July in Houston’s recorded history, dating back to the year 1889. Of course, Houston also experienced the warmest June in history this year. So does that mean August will be torrid as well? This is far less certain, and the first week or ten days of the month should feel mostly like a typical August. We’ll even start the month with a nice chance of rain showers today. All of this may provide little comfort, of course, as August is typically the hottest and most unpleasant of the year for Houston, weather-wise.

Also, as of today, we’re one-third of the way through the Atlantic hurricane season. It has been a relatively quiet start in terms of overall activity—while there have been three named storms, they have all been weak, short-lived systems. Happily, the next week or so looks pretty quiet as well. Unfortunately, most of a season’s activity comes later in August, and September, so we cannot draw any conclusions yet about what lies ahead for the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea. Matt will have more tomorrow in his tropics update.

Monday

Today should bring scattered showers later this morning, and into the afternoon hours, as low pressure and a reasonably moist atmosphere support rainfall. Chances will probably be in the 30- to 50-percent range for locations south of Interstate 10, with slightly reduced chances further inland. Skies will be partly cloudy, with high temperatures likely topping out in the mid-90s. Winds should generally be light, out of the southeast, at 5 to 10 mph. Lows tonight may briefly drop below 80 degrees.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday

High pressure builds back into the region during the middle of the work week, and this should bring mostly sunny skies overhead. This will push high temperatures into the upper 90s, to possibly 100 degrees for inland areas. Rain chances will fall back to around 20 percent each day, with isolated to scattered showers developing along the sea breeze.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

As high pressure backs off, our atmospheric conditions will become more favorable for rainfall heading into the weekend. Right now I’d peg rain chances at 50 percent for both Friday and Saturday, with perhaps lesser chances on Sunday. It’s still too early for a precise forecast, but certainly we could see a fair amount of showers and thunderstorms. Regardless, partly cloudy skies should help to limit high temperatures in the low- to mid-90s.

Highs should remain in the mid-90s to start next week.

Yesterday was Thirsty Thursday in parts of the Houston area. While the coverage of showers and storms was a bit less than Wednesday, some pretty heavy rain fell in spots, even leading to some street flooding. On the map below, the teal color is generally about an inch, green is an inch and a half, and pink/blue starts ratcheting up to 2 to 3 inches. Obviously, the hardest hit areas yesterday were in parts of Fort Bend County, Sharpstown, Bellaire, West U, and close to Pasadena.

We remain in drought, however. In fact, as of Tuesday, extreme drought had expanded to cover half of the Houston region.

These showers aren’t heavy enough over a wide enough area to really seriously dent the drought, but they offer considerable short-term relief. Hopefully we can get some more.

Today

Coverage of showers should be similar to more extensive than Thursday. We have a little extra help today coming courtesy of a little disturbance moving west across the Gulf. Like yesterday, generally slow moving showers could lead to a quick inch or two or even a bit more in spots. Plenty of places won’t see rain today. Outside of the storms, mid to upper-90s once more.

Weekend

I do think we’ll see a noticeable decrease in shower coverage this weekend. We’re sort of at the mercy of exactly how an upper level system tracks, currently expected to pass offshore far enough to sort of “rob” what’s needed for showers. A few places could see an isolated storm or two, especially on Sunday. Additionally, look for some haze, courtesy of Saharan dust. Mid to upper-90s should dominate for highs, with 70s for lows.

Next week

Rain chances should bounce back a little bit on Monday again, before diminishing Tuesday and perhaps Wednesday and Thursday as high pressure settles in overhead.

By the end of the week, there are a few more questions. With high pressure expected to anchor in North Texas, Oklahoma, or Kansas this should keep us hot and humid, but it may be just far enough away to keep the door cracked each day for shower and storm chances. More on that next week.

The heat will be with us though with mid to upper-90s each day. We’ll have a couple shots at 100+ here or there too, but I’d expect to see more 98s and 99s. Does it matter? Not really, but it’s something I guess. More Monday!

We certainly remain in drought in our area, but before Wednesday, only a handful of areas saw a fair bit of rain. Yesterday, the dynamic changed a bit, as a large chunk of the area saw a moderate amount of rain. Gray colors on the map below indicate about an inch or less, while blue coloring indicates up to 1.75″ or so of rain.

This was definitely needed! We will have additional opportunities in our future.

App issues

First, some quick housekeeping. We’ve received many reports from all of you on the issues of the app crashing. Thank you for your reports! Eric and I are sort of in flux this week, so it’s been a little trickier to address promptly. But, we have fixes in. Android users should be able to download an updated version now. iPhone users should have the update shortly. Check out the App Store later today. It will be version 1.5.156.

If you still have issues, please shoot an email to us ([email protected]) and let us know what’s up. Thanks for your patience.

Today

Since there’s almost always at least a chance of rain in Texas in summer, I like trying to explain how rainfall coverage will behave this time of year as compared to the day prior. The triggering mechanism for yesterday’s storms should be out of the area today, so my guess is we will see a bit less coverage than Wednesday. That could also mean that localized storms will dump slightly heavier rain. Either way, there’s definitely a chance of showers today almost anywhere as we head toward afternoon (even this morning near the coast), so have an umbrella at the ready.

We hit 94 degrees yesterday, our coolest day since July 1st! We will probably manage mid to upper-90s today.

Friday

From the looks of model data, we may have another little upper level system that helps enhance showers and storms tomorrow. So coverage may be more like Wednesday than today. Look for highs generally in the mid-90s, or a bit hotter inland.

Saturday & Sunday

Shower coverage on both days should diminish some. I suspect Sunday may have just a slightly higher chance than Saturday. Whatever the case, look for sun, a few clouds, and a bit of a light Saharan haze around. Highs should be in the mid to upper-90s.

Next week

Monday looks fairly similar with slight rain chances, sun, clouds, and mid to upper-90s. There remains a good chance that we see hotter temps and lower rain chances return for Tuesday and beyond into later next week. More as we get closer.

Tropics

Things remain very quiet. We could see a slight uptick in activity chances emerge late next week or weekend near Central America, but it’s nothing that looks meaningful for our area right now.