Good morning. Today is an important day for our republic, the one day a year when two halves come together to create something great. This tradition dates to the 1700s, and people often take time off from work to partake in this custom, walking up to a counter and making their choice around lunchtime. I am speaking, of course, of National Sandwich Day. Also, please do make sure you go vote in our election today, as the weather will provide no excuses.
Election Day
Temperatures this morning in Houston, in the low 40s for inland areas and upper 40s in the city, will probably be the region’s coolest for the next week. We’ll warm up fairly quickly, however, and the weather today will be, in a word, perfect. Highs will reach into the mid-70s, under mostly sunny skies. Winds will be light out of the east. Overnight lows on Tuesday night should be a few degrees warmer.
Tuesday morning lows are quite cool across the region. (Weather Bell)
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
These will be pleasant days, under the influence of a light east and southeasterly flow. In general, we expect mostly sunny skies, highs in the upper 70s to 80, and lows of around 60 in Houston—cooler inland, and warmer along the coast.
Saturday and Sunday
By this weekend a more pronounced southerly flow will raise humidity levels. Ultimately, high temperatures should hang around 80 degrees, but both Saturday and Sunday nights should be warmer, probably in the mid- or upper-60s.
Next week
This warming trend should continue until around Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, when some sort of front will trundle into the area. I still don’t have confidence in its timing or strength, but there is some hope it will bring us our first real chance of rainfall in quite some time.
A very powerful Hurricane Eta nears landfall on Tuesday morning. (NOAA)
Tropics
If you have not been paying attention to Hurricane Eta, it absolutely exploded in terms of intensity on Monday, and it will come ashore into Nicaragua today with Category-4 or -5 intensity winds. In addition, the storm will deliver devastating flooding in Nicaragua and Honduras. The storm is eerily similar in intensity to Hurricane Mitch, in 1998, which caused more than 11,000 fatalities.
By this weekend, after wreaking carnage in Central America, Eta should reemerge into the northwest Caribbean Sea, after which time it may threaten Cuba, Florida, or possibly the eastern Gulf of Mexico. It’s just too early to say much more.
Good morning. October has come and gone. The first ten days of the month were near normal, in terms of weather, followed by a middle period that was very warm. Many sites recorded record highs in the low 90s. But the last week of the month was much cooler, generally with days in the 70s and lows in the 50s.
All in all, then, the Houston area ended with near normal temperatures. Here’s a map showing departure from normal temperatures for the month along with the rest of the country.
Temperature anomaly for October, 2020. (Weathermodels.com)
Monday
A cool front pushed into Houston on Sunday, and this has made for a cool night, with lows generally dropping into the 40s except for parts of the city, and near the coast. As a result, the region will enjoy splendid fall weather today, with highs in the low 70s beneath sunny skies. Expect another clear and cool night, with temperatures perhaps dropping a degree or two cooler than Sunday night.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday
We’ll see a slight warmup this week as winds shift to come from the east, and eventually the southeast. Still, we expect three mostly sunny days, with highs in the mid- to upper-70s for most. Nights will warm some, from the 50s on Tuesday night to around 60 by Thursday. This is really fall as it should be in Houston.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
The onshore flow will become a little more pronounced by this weekend, and this should allow temperatures and humidity to creep up somewhat. I still expect mostly sunny skies, and this should allow highs to reach into the low 80s, with nights warming into the 60s. We might even see a slight chance of rain as moisture levels continue to climb in the atmosphere—but the signal for this is fairly weak.
Expect a gradual warm-up this week. (Weather Bell)
Next week
The overall pattern supports the passage of a cold front by around Tuesday of next week—but this is eight days into the future so it’s difficult to have too much confidence in this timing. This front, whenever it pushes through, will probably bring our region’s next real chance of rain with it as well.
Tropics
The season that won’t quit produced another hurricane this past weekend, with Hurricane Eta moving toward Nicaragua and intensifying. The 2020 Atlantic season is now tied with 2005 for the number of tropical storms and hurricanes that formed, 28. Eta, unfortunately, is going to bring plenty of misery to Central America in terms of winds, but the greater threat will come from heavy rainfall due to the slow-moving system. This will cause mudslides, swollen rivers, and plenty of devastation.
Monday morning track forecast for Hurricane Eta. (National Hurricane Center)
By the coming weekend, Eta probably will reemerge into the Caribbean Sea, and over the course of next week it may threaten Cuba, Florida, or elsewhere. This is something forecasters will have to watch for awhile, but it is not a storm that should concern us in Texas or even hard-hit Louisiana.
Good morning, and it’s a cool one again across the area. We have mostly 40s and some low-50s peppered in everywhere.
Temperatures are generally in the 40s and low 50s across most of the area this morning, a cool start! (NOAA)
Yesterday began one of the coolest but nicest stretches of weather for us in a long while that will continue through the weekend.
Today & weekend
Look for simply spectacular autumn weather all weekend long. We’ll top off in the upper-60s today with wall to wall sunshine. Look for low-70s tomorrow and mid-70s on Sunday. Morning lows will generally be in the mid-40s to mid-50s through Sunday. Winds should be lighter than they’ve been the last couple days.
For trick or treating, look for comfortable weather this year. Expect upper-50s to low-60s north and mid to upper-60s or a tick or two warmer in the city of Houston and points south.
Early next week
A reinforcing shot of drier, cooler air will arrive Sunday evening, so you’ll notice offshore winds kick up again later Sunday and on Monday. Look for cooler temperatures again Monday with highs in the 60s for most of us. Tuesday should see low-70s with lighter winds, and Wednesday likely sees mid-70s. Morning lows look cool on Monday and especially Tuesday. Look for upper-40s or low-50s Monday morning and mostly 40s on Tuesday morning.
Morning lows on Tuesday will bottom out in the low to mid-40s most places. (NOAA forecast via Weather Bell)
Look for some high clouds and warmer temps to return on Wednesday, and that heralds a pretty substantial and possibly lengthy warm-up that may linger through next weekend and into the following week.
Tropics
We knew 2020 was going to be an active hurricane season, but the absurdity of it all has still been surprising. It’s really been non-stop in the Gulf, either dealing with a threat or looking ahead to the next one since Hanna struck South Texas back in late July. Hurricane Zeta may have been the most impressive of them all for how anomalous it was.
Zeta is the strongest known storm back to at least 1850 in the western Gulf this late in the hurricane season.
Hurricane Zeta is the strongest tropical cyclone on record in this part of the Gulf this late in the year. pic.twitter.com/tpX1bnMUkO
Zeta peaked at 95 kts. (and I wouldn’t be shocked to see it reanalyzed at 100 kts. (115 mph) in the offseason), which shatters the record of 75 kts. that far northwest in the Gulf for this late in the year. More impressively, Zeta’s intensity ramped up 40 kts. (45 mph) in 26 hours.
Hurricane Zeta has intensified 40kt (45 mph) in the last 26 hours.
There's no record of anything close to that in the Gulf this late in the year. pic.twitter.com/V0qhipnqcr
The previous record from late October onward was somewhere between 10-21 kts. In that respect, Zeta is in a league of its own. Hurricane season technically runs through November 30th, but in the western Gulf, we usually shut down in mid-October. Zeta obliterated that paradigm. Why? Well, it’s not that the Gulf is super-warm. In fact, Zeta continued steadily strengthening over cooler water in the northern Gulf. The amplified, weird pattern over the West and Plains, responsible for our cold front, the ice storm in Oklahoma and parts of Texas, and the snow in the Rockies helped supercharge Zeta as it approached Louisiana.
This coupled w/ #Zeta's fast motion + juxtaposition SE of an upper trough & jet streak over TX (favoring deep-layer warm advection/ascent), should counteract the effect of cooler SSTs near the Gulf coast & result in little-no weakening of #Zeta as it nears Louisiana tonight #lawxhttps://t.co/MaGLV9fkt7pic.twitter.com/el2EsbzSKy
This was a case where shear was actually in a sweet spot for a storm and helped it along. The deep trough and very strong jet stream winds over Texas (known as a jet streak) actually helped Zeta find an environment that would be hospitable for a low pressure system to intensify within. This further underscores that water temperatures are far from everything when it comes to hurricane intensity. In this case we had a Gulf of Mexico that was only slightly supportive for a storm, but the storm got juiced by the atmospheric pattern over the Plains and Southeast. And the end result was a memorable, odd late season storm. Zeta also will end up being the strongest storm to make landfall so late in the season on the entire Gulf Coast. Zeta’s forward speed of over 45 mph over the Southeast made it one of the fastest moving storms on record (for any date) over the continental United States.
And we aren’t finished. The National Hurricane Center has 80 percent odds that a tropical wave in the Caribbean (dubbed Invest 96L) will develop into a depression or storm in the next 5 days.
A tropical wave tagged as Invest 96L has an 80% chance of development over the next 5 days. (NOAA)
If it gets a name, it will be called Eta, and 2020 would officially tie 2005 for the most storms on record in the Atlantic basin. As much as it pains me to write this, Eta is a storm that should probably be watched from Louisiana to Florida. It’s likely to percolate off the coast of Central America much of next week before perhaps being ushered north next weekend by our next weather maker over the Plains & Texas. How exactly that plays out is TBD. This is highly unlikely to come to Texas, but there a number of model solutions that bring it into the eastern Gulf or off the Florida coast. So, yet again, another one for our neighbors to the east to watch. We’ll update you on Monday.
It’s quite cold across the region this morning, ranging from a few readings in the upper 30s in some parts of Montgomery County down to around 50 degrees right along the coast. It looks like Houston’s official station, at Bush Intercontinental Airport, probably will bottom out at about 42 degrees. This is chilly, but still 7 degrees warmer than the all-time record set in 2017. Incidentally, the earliest freeze ever recorded in Houston came on October 31, 1993.
Our forecast ahead is pretty straightforward. We should see generally cooler than normal weather through the middle of next week, and our next real chance of rain is unlikely for quite some time. Enjoy fall, y’all!
It is a chilly, almost winter-like morning across the upper Texas coast on Thursday. (Weather Bell)
Thursday
Today will not be so nice. Although sunshine will predominate, strong northerly winds will keep things on the unpleasant side Thursday. Highs will recover into the low 60s for most of the area, but northwest winds should gust today as high as 25 mph. Winds will back off slightly this evening, but it will still be a cold, clear, breezy night with lows falling into the 40s again for most of the region.
Friday
A damn near perfect day. Highs in the low 70s. A light wind. Ample sunshine. Lows Friday night will probably be a couple of degrees warmer.
Saturday and Sunday
By late Friday we should see winds swing around to come from the east, and then southeast, but the region won’t warm up too appreciably. Under sunny skies, highs should climb into the mid-70s for most, possibly touching 80 degrees by Sunday for some locations near the coast. Lows will remain solidly in the 50s. A reinforcing shot of cooler and drier air arrives Sunday evening or during the overnight hours.
Here is the seven-day rainfall forecast for Texas from NOAA. It looks … dry. (Pivotal Weather)
Next week
Expect highs in the 70s and lows in the 50s through Wednesday. After that a warming trend is likely heading into the weekend, with highs rising to perhaps 80 degrees, and lows to around 60. As for rain chances, they’re going to remain low for awhile, at least until the end of the next work week.
Matt will have you covered tomorrow, when he’ll discuss all the records set by Hurricane Zeta as it strengthened Wednesday before making landfall in southeastern Louisiana—such a nasty, late season storm.
