Good morning. The Houston area is now on day three of a miserable stretch of weather that has been magnified by widespread and ongoing power outages that seemingly have no end. Of the weather, we can at least say this, Houston is closer to the end of this Arctic blast than the beginning.

Wednesday

Generally light precipitation is falling across the metro area, and as anticipated this is simply rainfall south of the freezing line, and freezing rain to the north. Right now this line stretches roughly from Columbus to Katy to Cypress to Kingwood. This freezing line should lift slowly north to the northern edge of Harris County by around mid-morning, and to Highway 105 by around noon. (Here’s a list of current icy road conditions). Most of the region should be passable by noon as temperatures warm, but motorists along and north of Interstate 10 should take care on roads, especially bridges and elevated highways, until ice has melted.

Precipitation will begin to exit the area to the east by noon or shortly thereafter, leaving a cold and gray day in its wake. High temperatures today will generally reach about 40 degrees south of Interstate 10, and mid- to upper-30s north of the freeway. However, for inland areas—again, north of Interstate 10—temperatures will begin to approach freezing levels by around sunset or within a few hours after this. Depending on the extent to which roadways dried, any lingering water may freeze, and travel may remain treacherous in some locations. Lows will drop into the upper 20s for inland areas, and remain at or just above freezing closer to the coast.

Thursday

As additional cold air surges into the area on Wednesday night—and this is the final push of very cold air—we’ll see one more slight chance of precipitation in the form of snow or sleet during the morning hours. However, this is generally expected to be slight, and not pose additional problems on roadways. Highs should reach into the mid- to upper-30s on Thursday, with one more very cold night. Lows will drop into the 20s for much of the region.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

The weekend will see stair-stepping high temperatures of 40s on Friday, 50s on Saturday and 60s on Sunday. There will be plenty of sunshine. Houston is unlikely to see a freeze again this winter after Saturday morning, but after what we’ve been through this week I am making no guarantees.

Power outages

The catastrophic power outage continues across much of Texas, with 2.8 million customers still without power statewide as of 7:30 am Wednesday morning. This is down from 4.4 million on Tuesday morning, but about half of those losses are within the Houston metro area. State officials who manage the electric grid at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas have not been able to provide any reliable information about when power may be restored to all. This really is unacceptable in weather conditions such as these.

Much of the Houston area has warmed to at or above-freezing levels today, but just as the region can start to take a breath, Mother Nature is readying a second punch. It will come tonight in the form of another round of precipitation, which will fall as freezing rain for inland areas.

Tuesday night

Road conditions have been improving today, and should remain so until later evening, or possibly even midnight. After this point precipitation from a coastal low pressure system will begin overspreading the area. The key question is where the freezing line falls, north of which will produce freezing rainfall. Initially, this line will likely fall roughly along Interstate 10, and then may migrate northward as temperatures warm Wednesday morning. The big concern this presents is accumulating freezing rain on roads and power lines, especially north of Highway 105.

The bottom line: Travel in the northern half of Harris County, and points north, could become problematic to rather dangerous late this evening, and should be avoided after about 10pm.

Wednesday

The precipitation will come to an end by around noon on Wednesday, and then it becomes a game of when air temperatures will warm enough to melt off any ice on roadways. For now I think that will occur before noon in Harris County, and probably after noon in Montgomery County. There likely will be some point around Highway 105, or north, where it does not get warm enough to burn through the ice. Where that will be? Can’t say for sure right now.

In Houston itself, expect highs to reach the upper 30s, with lows dropping just below freezing Wednesday night. Some additional light precipitation is possible Wednesday night, but at this point is not expected to cause major additional problems.

Thursday and beyond

Thursday looks cloudy and cool, with highs in the upper 30s to 40 degrees. But the rain will be over. Thursday night will provide one more sting, with lows dropping into the 20s. After this we’ll be off to the races in terms of sunshine and warming. We should see mostly sunny skies into early next week.

We’ll have a comprehensive update for you in the morning. Please stay safe, and as warm as these trying conditions permit.

Good morning. Temperatures are bottoming out at 10 to 15 degrees across much of the metro area in what will be the region’s coldest night in more than three decades. The city’s official low temperature, measured at Bush Intercontinental Airport, looks to be 12 degrees.

Making matters worse today, power outages persist across the state, with more than 4.1 million customers without power. Many of these power outages are concentrated in and around the Houston area. Weather conditions will begin to slowly improve today, but there are no reliable estimates for when widespread power will be restored. We discussed why in a post on Monday.

Tuesday

Clearing skies and winds shifting to come from the east later today will help warm temperatures somewhat. Most areas south of Interstate 10 should reach above freezing later today, but road conditions are iffy this morning. Some streets dried out with Monday’s sunshine, but roads and bridges that remained wet iced over again on Monday night. Sunshine later this morning should help with most roadways later today.

However, precipitation will return this evening and overnight as moisture moves in from the Gulf of Mexico. Most likely the precipitation will begin around midnight, but we can’t rule out it starting earlier. For Houston, it should begin as rain, but could transition to freezing rain over night. North of a line from Matagorda to Houston to Winnie, we can probably expect temperatures to freeze tonight. Galveston and Brazoria counties, for the most part, are unlikely to rain transition to freezing rain as they will remain above 32 degrees.

Bottom line: Travel Tuesday evening and overnight in Houston and could be very problematic due to icy roads. For Montgomery County and points north accumulating freezing could be exceedingly dangerous, and pose problems for power lines.

Wednesday

By mid-morning Wednesday, or shortly thereafter, temperatures should rise above freezing across nearly all of the metro area, and this should melt ice. Highs in Houston will reach about 40 degrees, if not a touch warmer. Some additional sleet or light snow is possible Wednesday night, but this seems unlikely to be too problematic. Areas south of Interstate 10 are unlikely to freeze.

Thursday

The precipitation should end by late Wednesday night, setting the stage for a dry and cold Thursday, with highs near 40 degrees. Expect one more very cold night on Thursday night, with lows in the 20s. Fortunately, it will be dry,

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

As high pressure comes to dominate our weather, expect sunny skies on Friday, with highs in the 40s, with temperatures reaching the 60s by the weekend. At last, our winter blast will be at an end. Not soon enough.

We again want to express our best wishes and thoughts for so many of our readers, Houstonians, and Texans who are outright suffering tonight because of the combination of a true “tail event” and who knows what else happened with the power grid (which I sincerely hope is transparently communicated to Texans in the days and weeks ahead). Please, if you’re one of the fortunate ones tonight, check on anyone you know that may not be so fortunate.

That said, we are a weather blog first and foremost and we want to let you know about a couple things: How tonight’s forecast is tracking and an update on Wednesday’s storm.

How cold tonight?

We’ve been asking this question for days when it was apparent that tonight would be the main event for cold. So, we have a lot of models and data and whatnot, but let’s actually compare to data from the most recent comparable event: December 1989. On December 23 and December 24, 1989, Houston (Bush Airport) hit 7° and 11° respectively, close analogs to what we believe tonight’s low temperature will be. One way to check on how things are going is to track the temperature at Bush Airport hour by hour and compare to the hourly observations in those events, as well as the NWS point forecast from just before 8 PM this evening.

Through 9 PM at least, we are coming up short of both nights from 1989 as well as the current forecast. All that said, it’s very early still, relatively speaking, and temperatures on nights like this can easily drop like a rock under the right conditions. So don’t read too much into what you see here just yet, but I felt this would be an interesting way of looking at things.

If you are unable to sleep or have too much time on your hands tonight (like me, probably) and you want to track our progress through the night, you can check out real-time IAH observations at this link.

(Editor’s note: Replace “IAH” in that link’s URL with whatever airport code you desire, if you’d like to track conditions at that location. Some local ideas? GLS for Galveston, HOU for Hobby, EFD for Ellington Field, LVJ for Pearland, SGR for Sugar Land, TME for the west side of Katy, DWH for Tomball, and CXO for Conroe. You must keep the “K” before those three letters though!)

Wednesday’s Storm

The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Warning for Wednesday’s storm now.

Here’s what I can tell you confidently tonight:

• The precipitation will fall as either plain rain or freezing rain. Sleet or snow are unlikely in our area.
• Precipitation should break out around Midnight, give or take a few hours Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.

Exactly who sees freezing rain vs. plain rain? That’s the forecast challenge right now, as shallow, dense cold air is not always easy to dislodge. If we look at the HRRR model forecast for tomorrow evening at midnight, you can see roughly where it predicts the freezing line to be located.

This is essentially just north of US-59 to Houston and east along or just south of I-10 to Port Arthur. The European model and NAM model are slightly warmer than this, and the GFS model is very similar to the HRRR. All models show temperatures getting above freezing by mid-morning or so Wednesday across the entire region. Expect at least a few hours of freezing rain in Houston, with a longer duration as you go north. Total icing may be as much as a glaze to a tenth of an inch across Harris County, with higher amounts possible as you go north into northern Liberty and Montgomery Counties and even more from Walker County northward. For most of us this shouldn’t be a “power outage” issue, but rather a travel one. Expect travel to become difficult to impossible north of I-10 or US-59 after midnight Tuesday night, but we will likely see improvement from south to north after sunrise.

Things could change, but that’s what it looks like right now. We want you to be aware and be smart about this next storm, so that’s why we have this here. Eric will have more for you in the morning. But right now, just focus on getting through tonight. Our thoughts are with you. Please stay safe.