Today is a special day. At 6:15am CT local time in Houston, 99 percent of the world’s population is illuminated by the sun. Of these 99 percent, the vast majority are in direct sunlight, while the remainder are in some form of twilight. Only parts of Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea are in full darkness at this time. As to why this occurs a couple of weeks after the summer solstice, and not on the summer solstice, that has to due with the distribution of the world’s population, and the location of Earth’s landmasses. TimeAndDate has more detail on all of this in a great fact-checking post.

Speaking of that sun, we’ll see plenty of it during the days ahead. This weekend looks extremely hot before conditions start to moderate a little bit more each day next week. It will be nice to have daily rain chances again.

Friday

Areas inside Loop 610 won the rainfall lottery on Thursday, but the chance of hitting an isolated rain shower today is less than on Thursday. Instead, we can simply expect mostly sunny weather, with highs in the upper 90s to 100 degrees in Houston, and warmer conditions still for far inland areas such as College Station. Winds will be light, out of the southwest at 5 to 10 mph. Overnight lows probably won’t drop below 80 degrees.

Saturday

Look for very hot weather, with highs at or above 100 degrees for much of the area with sunny skies. Please take precautions due to the heat during the middle of the day.

Sunday

This will be another hot and mostly sunny day, probably the hottest of the period. However, there is a slight chance, perhaps 10 to 20 percent, of an afternoon shower or thunderstorm kicking up along with the sea breeze. I mean, probably not. But maybe.

Next week

The details for next week’s weather remain a bit fuzzy, but the overall trend should be one toward more typical weather for mid-July in Houston. That means that as we get toward the middle of the week highs likely will slot somewhere in the mid-90s, with a decent 30 or 40 percent chance of rain each day. After the last few days, that doesn’t exactly sound terrible, does it? We’ll be back on Monday with some more clarity on those details. Until then, please take the heat seriously this weekend.

Good morning. You’ll notice that today headline is yet another acrostic, in which the first letter of each word spells out Houston. Because there is not much else to challenge a forecaster when high pressure dominates our weather, I’m going to challenge my creativity with words and acrostics until the heat breaks and we see some more widespread showers. And when will that happen? There is a chance of some small relief by the middle of next week.

On another note, if you’re going to be in the bay area this weekend, and particularly if you live close by Johnson Space Center, please note that they’re conducting a pressure test of a lunar habitat on Saturday. Effectively this means that engineers are going to pump up the pressure in a habitat to see how high it can go until it bursts. The burst test will begin at 8 am, with the culminating boom likely to come between 11 am and noon. Don’t freak out if you hear a loud noise!

Thursday

Conditions today will be similar to Wednesday in that high temperatures will generally reach the mid- to upper-90s beneath mostly sunny skies. Also like on Wednesday, there is the potential for some isolated to scattered thunderstorms. While virtually all of us saw no rain yesterday, a thunderstorm just east of downtown Houston popped out 1 to 2 inches of rain across a couple of miles near Galena Park. There may be a couple of those rainy areas today, as well. Otherwise, winds will be light, out of the south.

Friday and Saturday

Hot and sunny, with highs near 100 degrees, if not reaching triple digits. Rain chances fall to 10 percent or less. Winds will generally be light.

Sunday and Monday

Temperatures remain about the same, but rain chances may increase slightly to 10 to 20 percent during the afternoon. Skies remain mostly sunny.

Tuesday and beyond

It looks as if the high pressure ridge may start to back off by the early part of next week, and this could allow for temperatures to start to drop into the mid-90s. This may also introduce better daily rain chances along the sea breeze. There are no promises here, but only potential. We’ll see.

Good morning. Houston’s hotter than normal weather for July will continue for the foreseeable future, as high pressure continues to set the agenda through the weekend and into next week. It looks as though the heat will peak this weekend, with triple-digit conditions for much of the area, before a slight moderation in temperatures next week. As for when we might see widespread rainfall, that is probably at least a week or 10 days off.

Wednesday

Skies will be mostly sunny today, with highs generally in the mid- to upper-90s for central parts of the Houston area, with warmer conditions possible inland, and slightly cooler weather along the coast. Winds will be out of the south at 5 to 10 mph. As an atmospheric disturbance approaches, we may see a few scattered to isolated showers this afternoon, but overall chances are probably about 20 percent for the coast, and 10 percent inland. So, not much. Lows tonight will probably not fall below 80 degrees.

Thursday

A day quite similar to Wednesday.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

The heat continues to build into the weekend, with highs of about 100 degrees likely for much of the metro area, to go along with sunny skies. Rain chances are less than 10 percent—unless you count the perspiration falling as you walk outside.

Next week

It looks like the high pressure system will retreat a bit to the northwest next week, which should bring highs down a couple of degrees. It won’t be much to start. But I could see the development of more clouds later next week, and that’s when rain chances may start to improve a little bit.

Since our post last week, Tropical Storms Bonnie and Colin have formed and exited the Atlantic basin. Looking ahead, those should be the last storms for a bit.

Tropical outlook in a sentence

Over the next week (or longer), we are not expecting any new systems of note in the tropical Atlantic.

Bonnie & Colin

This time last week, we noted that PTC #2 would likely become Bonnie and “has a chance to become a hurricane as it approaches Central America, but it probably has equal chances of not being one too.” As it turns out, the latter was correct. Bonnie’s forward speed and a bit of shear was just too much to overcome, and the cyclone never organized until it moved into the Pacific. Since it held itself together across Central America, it retained the name Bonnie, and is heading out to sea.

Meanwhile, Colin formed briefly off the Carolina coast, somewhat of a surprise from last Tuesday’s post. Colin didn’t last long, about 24 hours from Saturday through Sunday, and it dumped a few inches of rain in parts of the Carolinas.

2022 to date

With Colin’s development, that puts us at 3 tropical storms as of July 5th. They’ve combined for an “accumulated cyclone energy” of about 2.8, which is right on normal for this point of the season.

ACE tallies up how long a storm maintains a certain intensity during its lifetime. The bigger the storm, the bigger the ACE, and obviously the more of those storms in a season, the higher the value will be. Typically, our 3rd storm does not form until early August, so from that point of view, we’re cranking. But they’ve all been fairly weak systems, so overall our season is off to a mostly normal start, which is nice for a change.

That said, note from the chart above that we still have roughly 97.7 percent of the season ahead of us from an ACE standpoint. Again, it’s normal for the early season to be generally weak.

Looking ahead

Over the next 7 to 10 days, we are not expecting any tropical development in the Atlantic. As always, you could get a Colin scenario, where something brief and weak can spin up close to home. Short of that, however, it appears dust and minimal tropical waves of note will be the story over the next week and probably a bit longer. Dust tends to indicate dry air is present, which is not something tropical storms care for. This is also the time of year we expect widespread dust over the Atlantic basin.

Some of the typical things we’d look for to kickstart tropical activity are sitting out there on the horizon per the models, so I would expect maybe the last week to 10 days of July to provide some items to watch, but that’s purely speculative right now. For now, enjoy the quiet we have and use it as an opportunity to ensure you’re set for the August and September gauntlet.