Welcome to another edition of our weekly tropical outlook. The last two hurricane seasons have been full of many quick developing, lower-end storms. Some folks deride the National Hurricane Center for “wasting time” naming these things, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, whether bloated, thin, short, tall, round, square, or what, it’s still a duck. And that’s why we have added another storm since last week.

If you blinked, you might have missed Tropical Storm Danny yesterday, but it formed off the coast of South Carolina, made landfall and weakened to a depression within about 12 to 18 hours. It wasn’t quite like Imelda, and its fast forward motion will keep it from becoming a Carolina or Georgia version of Imelda, but it went quickly, and it came from an area I didn’t even mention a week ago. So go the tropics.

Tropical outlook in a sentence

While there is one area in the Atlantic for us to monitor, it will likely face an uphill battle to make it to the Gulf in a position to develop any more significantly.

Invest 95L

The area people have been watching a good bit since last week is Invest 95L, which today does not pose much risk of making it to the Gulf. It will likely either stay disorganized and continue across the Caribbean (where it will face mountains of shear) or it will develop a little and get pulled north toward the Bahamas, Florida, or Eastern Gulf. Colloquially, some of us in meteorology will use the phrase “weaker, wester” to describe these things. It seems highly unlikely that 95L makes it to Houston. The National Hurricane Center has just lowered odds of development risk on 95L to 30 percent over the next 5 days.

Invest 97L

The one area I want to focus on is the new Invest 97L, which now has a 40 percent chance of developing over the next 5 days according to the National Hurricane Center (up from 20 percent this morning).

As you can see on satellite above, Invest 97L has some loose thunderstorm activity, but it is not yet organized. The one thing about Tropical Storm Danny: Say what you will about it being “pathetic” or whatever, but at least it had that swirly cinnamon bun look going for it yesterday. 97L is not there yet.

Invest 97L will be steered west or west-northwest around the periphery of high pressure in the Atlantic. Both key operational models, the Euro and GFS tend to buy into Invest 97L developing over the next three days. However, they differ significantly on *how* much development occurs. I’ve plotted the GFS and European models below, showing you what we call 850 mb vorticity. What? That’s a good map to look at to gauge where things stand with potential development risk. And you can indeed see both the GFS & Euro show ample “spin” (yellow & orange) and low pressure near the entrance to the Caribbean on Friday morning, with the Euro on the left and the GFS on the right.

The difference is that the GFS is far, far more aggressive in organizing Invest 97L over the next 3 days. Why does this matter? Because the GFS has been the only model showing this coming to the Gulf as a significant storm. If it’s unrealistically strong 3 days from now, that doesn’t bode well for its accuracy on days 7 to 10. So right now, using context clues, there is a good shot we see the potential for a tropical depression or storm approaching the southern Lesser Antilles by the end of this week.

From there, this will have a mountain to overcome. The Caribbean is full of shear, and any system will not be greeted by favorable conditions on the other side of the islands. While the GFS keeps this going somewhat across the Caribbean, the Euro rips it to shreds. Neither model’s ensemble is particularly bullish on this system’s future either. So sitting here on Tuesday, I find it difficult to think that Invest 97L will make it to Texas as an organized tropical entity.

That said, the weather pattern over Texas is likely to say fairly cool and wet for most of the next 2 weeks. It gets tough to think that a tropical system makes it here as an organized system, but a bigger risk could be that the moisture gets here and exacerbates an already wet Texas.

That’s a wet Texas to say the least. So the bottom line is that we’ll want to sort of watch this system for its moisture. But at least at this point there’s no reason to think it’s going to become a problem for us, and I can’t point you to any reliable, outlier model guidance that says it will. We will let you know if that were to change.

Beyond this, expect a quieter tropics for a little while, as the atmospheric background signals (what we often call the “intraseasonal phase” of the atmosphere) is fairly suppressed over the Atlantic basin, meaning it will inhibit storm formation. That doesn’t mean we won’t see a storm or two, but in general, storm development risk should be lower than it has been. This could allow for our first significant Saharan dust event of the summer as well sometime in mid-July. We will see.

Much of the Houston region saw 1 to 3 inches of rain on Monday, with some higher bullseyes near LaPorte and Baytown on the east side of Houston. Today will see a similar setup, although with slightly less favorable conditions, overall totals should be less for most. The latter half of the week should see some sunshine, but we’re still looking at a wet holiday weekend.

Tuesday

The atmosphere remains moist, with lift from an upper-level system, but the overall dynamics favor less storm coverage today. That doesn’t mean it won’t rain. Most of Houston will probably see 0.25 to 2 inches of rain today, with some isolated areas of 3 inches along and east of Interstate 45. Area bayous should be able to handle these rains, so we’re probably looking at street flooding, at worst, in hard hit areas. Like on Monday, storms should wind down pretty quickly after the sun sets.

Otherwise, skies today will be mostly cloudy, with southeast winds, and highs will only reach the mid-80s. (I took a walk on Monday evening and, dare I say it, conditions felt almost pleasant?) Lows Tuesday night will drop into the mid-70s.

Wednesday

As moisture levels drop and the atmosphere becomes a little less favorable, the chances for heavy rainfall will diminish significantly on Wednesday. However, I think much of the area may still see at least some light to moderate rainfall during the day time to go along with partly sunny skies. Highs will be near 90 degrees.

Thursday and Friday

These days should both see partly sunny skies, with highs in the low 90s for the most part. Rain chances aren’t going to fall back to zero, but less than half of the area will probably see rain. We should get a chance to dry out a little bit before the next round arrives.

Saturday and Sunday

Yet another front will approach our region and stall out this weekend, and it will lead to elevated rain chances over the holiday weekend. The forecast has shifted a bit, with the better rain chances now expected on Saturday, with perhaps slightly less coverage on July 4th. Anyway, expect rain this weekend, perhaps to the tune of 1 to 2 inches. Sunday may see some partly sunny skies, but still has the potential for rain, and it is possible that fireworks displays may be impacted. Highs will drop back to around 90 degrees both days. Rain chances and cloudy skies continue into early next week.

The tropics remain active, especially for late June. Matt will have a full update later today.

Good morning. This will be a fairly wet week, with more clouds than sunshine. Rain chances will peak today and Tuesday, before a bit of a lull, with healthy rain chances returning for the Fourth of July weekend. Will the holiday be a total washout? Probably not, but it’s too early to tell whether it will rain during our much anticipated fireworks’ shows.

Monday

Pretty much everyone in the Houston region is guaranteed to see rain today as an upper-level low pressure system combines with a very moist atmosphere. But whereas some regions see intermittent light showers, others will see downpours. So far storms have moved steadily from southeast to northwest, and this motion has limited rainfall rates to 1 to 2 inches per hour as storms move through. Our primary concern is that, in a few areas, these storms may grind to a halt.

Overall, I expect much of the region will see 1 to 3 inches today, with a few bullseyes of 3 to 5 inches closer to the coast and south of Interstate 10. A few low-lying roadways may flood, but overall these totals should be manageable. Do take care during your morning and evening commute, however. Highs today will likely crest in the mid-80s, with lows dropping into the mid-60s tonight as shower activity wanes, but does not entirely go away.

Tuesday

Tuesday should be a bit like Monday-lite, with the potential for heavy rainfall again, but likely less coverage and less intensity as overall conditions are a bit less favorable. Still most of the area will again see at least some rainfall, with highs in the upper 80s.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday

As the upper-level low moves away, rain chances will back off a bit, leaving us with partly sunny days. Some sea-breeze driven showers will still be possible during the afternoon hours on these days, but at this point I think they’ll probably be more “miss” than “hit” at this point. Highs will likely rise into the low 90s, which is not terrible as we get into July.

Saturday and Sunday

After a few drier days, in terms of rainfall, precipitation chances will probably be on the rise this weekend as the atmosphere turns more unstable. Unfortunately, we’re still a little too far out to have much confidence in the overall forecast, but right now I’d pencil in 60 percent rain chances each day, which could be problematic for outdoor activities. Given that we’re still several days away, this forecast is far from locked in, but something to keep in mind.

Tropics

We’re likely to see tropical activity pick back up this week after a lull in late June, but for now we don’t see any real threats to Texas or Louisiana over the next week or two. We’ll have more in our weekly tropics report tomorrow.

We’re starting the day just a tiny bit less humid than yesterday. It has sure felt like summer the back half of this week. The humidity will remain high, but temperatures are going to gradually step back a bit as rain chances kick back up later in the weekend.

Friday & Saturday

Both today and tomorrow should feature mostly similar weather. Expect a mix of sun and some clouds, with highs in the low to mid-90s and lows in the mid to upper-70s, along with fairly high humidity. Rain chances will be pretty typical for this time of year, with at least a few showers or thunderstorms around. There could be a slight uptick in storm chances late Saturday afternoon or evening as the pattern over our area begins to change to one dominated by a trough in the upper atmosphere. This would be especially true south and east of Houston.

Sunday & Monday

Both Sunday and Monday will probably see scattered to numerous showers and thunderstorms. Monday may have slightly more coverage than Sunday, but both days will see considerable chances of rain at virtually any point in the day. Look for highs in the 80s, especially Monday. Lows will be in the 70s.

Rest of next week

The overall weather pattern next week will be a bit odd across the country, with all-time record breaking heat in the Pacific Northwest (seriously, just an incredible and disconcerting weather event up that way, amid a historic drought too; both events carrying the fingerprints of climate change), a hot East Coast, and a cool trough sort of stuck over the Central U.S.

What does this mean for Houston and the surrounding area? Well, it means we shouldn’t see any severe heat next week. Yay, us. High temperatures will actually be held down some because of higher rain chances. Days with more rain will be in the mid to upper 80s. Days with less rain should be in the low-90s. Lows should be in the 70s.

As is often the case, pinning down the exact timing of showers and storms and who will see the most rain is a bit of a meteorological slog; we just don’t know yet how things will precisely unfold next week. But suffice it to say there will at least be chances of rain or storms each day. Right now I’m favoring Tuesday and maybe Friday for the greatest coverage of storms, as the trough tries to reload itself nearby later in the week. But we’ll fine tune that through the weekend.

How much rain should we expect? As of right now, I don’t think this will be a major, widespread excessive rain event. But, a healthy 1 to 2 inches should be expected in most places on average between now and next Friday, with the regular caveats that some places could see more and others a little less. I do think areas south and east of Houston have a higher chance of seeing some of those higher amounts.

At this time, we don’t expect to have to use the Space City Weather Flood Scale, but we’ll be watching closely the next few days to see if that thinking changes.

By the way, it’s a good time to download our weather app, so you can know right away if any changes to the forecast occur this weekend! Tap here for Apple. Tap here for Android.

Tropics

We continue to watch this tropical disturbance (Invest 95L) way out in the deep Atlantic, and also way out of bounds for what is normal this early in the season. The National Hurricane Center has dropped development odds on this one a little since yesterday, sitting at 30 percent as of 1 AM CT.

We’ll get another update not long after I publish this post.

As of right now, we don’t think this has much of a future in front of it as it treks across the Atlantic. Given how out of bounds it is climatologically and a somewhat hostile road west, development, if any, would be very slow and possibly erratic. Probably nothing we will need to ever worry about, but it’s certainly nothing for us to worry about right now.

More on Monday morning or perhaps Sunday, if necessary.