In brief: We’re interrupting your Sunday with a short post to note the possibility of severe weather in the Houston metro this afternoon and early evening. Conditions aren’t ideal, but they could support strong thunderstorms.
Hi everyone. I hope you’re enjoying this humid Sunday in our fair city. We’re posting a quick update to note the possibility that some strong thunderstorms may develop this afternoon in association with a weak front approaching the region. Unfortunately we don’t have great data about the state of the atmosphere—a sounding over the city or just to our northwest would go along way—but there are some ingredients available for the development of storms.
The most likely timeframe will be from about noon to 8 pm CT. If the capping inversion in the atmosphere (preventing warm, humid air at the surface from rising) ends up breaking over the city, we could see a fairly wide outbreak of thunderstorms. There will be the usual threats in the form of hail, damaging winds, and possibly a tornado or two. I want to emphasize that conditions are not ideal for severe weather, but the potential is lurking in our atmosphere.
The bottom line is that if you’re going to be out and about this afternoon you will want to check the radar and be prepared for inclement weather. The likelihood of storms will diminish this evening, and then should fade entirely tonight in Houston. We’ll be back with a comprehensive update, as usual, on Monday morning.
In brief: Scattered showers and storms will pop up in the Houston area through the day today, leading to locally heavy rain, especially east of I-45. A couple stronger storms cannot be ruled out either, again especially to the east. After a quieter period this weekend and early next week, we may be in store for more unsettled weather and rain chances late next week and weekend.
Rainfall update
Of note in Texas, there was some truly awful flooding late yesterday and last night in the Rio Grande Valley. Harlingen had nearly 14 inches of rain yesterday with over 10″ falling between 5 and 11 PM last night. It was their wettest day on record, with all but one other top 25 wettest day occurring between May and November prior to yesterday. For McAllen, it was the third wettest day on record. Even Brownsville cracked their top 25 list as well.
Radar estimated and gauge corrected rainfall the last couple days in South Texas, with much of the Lower Rio Grande Valley seeing 8 to 15 inches. (NOAA MRMS)
Locally, we have not seen that kind of rain. Fulshear and Simonton saw some locally heavy rain, with 1 to 3 inches falling there, extending north into Waller County. And areas southwest of Wharton and around Matagorda Bay saw 1 to 4 inches. Harris County saw rain yesterday, but most areas saw a half-inch or less.
Radar this morning shows some heavier showers in Liberty County but mostly calm conditions elsewhere. As the day drags on, look for additional showers and embedded thunderstorms to crop up. I would not be at all surprised to see some very hefty downpours occur, particularly along or east of I-45 later this afternoon. We are in a marginal risk (1/5) for severe storms, so any storm that we see today could produce some gusty winds or even a brief, isolated tornado, particularly between Winnie and Lake Charles later today. However, I don’t want to discount the Houston area, as we have not exactly had great model performance with geographic placement of storms this week.
Forecast rainfall today from the NWS, though I would lean lower to the west and near-forecast with isolated higher amounts to the east. (Pivotal Weather)
Rain totals are a bit tricky to nail down, but I would say, expect around a half-inch in Houston with a few higher amounts possible east of I-45, lesser amounts to the west. To the east, we should see 1 to 3 inches, with even some higher amounts possible in spots. We will keep our stage 1 flood alert in place. Rain rates yesterday were easily near 3 inches an hour in the Valley, and that could be noted here as well.
So, bottom line: Scattered showers and storms today. Especially this afternoon. Locally heavy downpours, especially east of I-45, along with a low-end severe weather risk. Localized street flooding remains a concern in those areas with heavier, more persistent rain.
Saturday
I’m going to spin tomorrow optimistically. I think we’ll start off cloudy, perhaps with some areas of fog. There may even be a few light showers around. But as the day progresses, I suspect we’ll see improvement, with more sunshine, less cloud cover, and high temperatures popping back into the 80s. We should hopefully be able to keep the Houston Open moving along.
Sunday
While the majority of Sunday looks fine in the Houston area, there will be a passing disturbance to our north. As this occurs, it could be enough to set off some thunderstorms, primarily north of I-10 and especially north of Highway 105 across Navasota, Conroe, and Cleveland. South of I-10, storms will be unlikely. The most likely time for a few storms would be in the late afternoon hours, heading into the early evening. Everything quickly clears to our east by mid to late-evening. We’ll warm from the upper-60s into the low-80s.
Early next week
We should get a weak front through here Sunday night or Monday morning that ushers in some notably more comfortable air for a day or so. Thereafter, the onshore machine will pump back warm, humid air off the Gulf and into Texas by Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday. Low temps should remain in the 60s with highs in the 80s most of the time. Daytime highs could push upper-80s by Wednesday.
Later next week
A more unsettled pattern looks to settle in over Texas and more broadly the Plains and Southeast later next week, which could linger through the weekend. I don’t expect a ton of rain here right now, but I do believe our thunderstorm chances will increase. This may be especially true as you get north of Houston and northeast into Louisiana and elsewhere.
The 8 to 14 day hazards outlook from the Climate Prediction Center is highlighting areas just northeast of Houston next week for heavy rainfall. (NOAA)
That said, it’s too soon to say much more than that. As we noted in our Q&A post the other day, sometimes there is enough signal in the model noise to highlight a forecast risk, and in this case that’s what we have late next week and weekend. Stay tuned!
In brief: Light to moderate showers are moving into Houston from the southwest this morning, and this more or less will be the pattern over the next two days. There’s a chance for some heavier rain on Friday afternoon or evening, but overall the threat for significant flooding in Houston and surrounding suburbs is fairly low. After Friday, our weather turns warmer for awhile.
Rain status
For a few days now we’ve been discussing the impending arrival of a disturbance in the upper atmosphere, and its potential to drop buckets of rainfall over the region. There has been a see-saw battle between global and regional weather models. Now that the rains have finally begun, the contours of this system and its impacts are finally coming into focus. Essentially, instead of seeing mostly heavy rainfall in the Houston region, we are likely to see mostly light to moderate showers over the next two days.
Regional radar as of 6:50 am CT on Thursday morning. (RadarScope)
The one exception to this is locations southwest of the Houston metro area, including Jackson, Matagorda, Wharton, and Colorado counties that have already received 1 inch of rainfall. Some locations within these counties may eventually pick up 4 to 6 inches of rainfall with higher totals. This is certainly enough to cause some street flooding issues. So areas southwest of Houston could get soggy. But as for Houston itself, we are probably looking at rain accumulations of 0.5 to 2 inches between now and Friday night.
I am going to leave the Stage 1 flood alert in place for areas south of Interstate 10 out of an abundance of caution, because at this time there should not be significant flooding or mobility disruptions in Houston and its suburbs.
Thursday
We are seeing light to moderate showers moving in from the southwest this morning, and these should be fairly persistent for much of the day. Expect on-and-off rain, with overall mostly light accumulations. Certainly there could be a few isolated thunderstorms with some heavier rain, but I don’t expect widespread issues. With cloudy skies, high temperatures today are likely to peak in the mid-70s with easterly winds of about 10 mph and higher gusts. There may be a lull in the rain this evening (or not) before more widespread showers return after midnight.
The potential for heavy rainfall is greater to the southwest of Houston this week. (Weather Bell)
Friday
I expect Friday to be similar. If there is a time when we may see more dynamic weather, including heavier rain, it probably will come on Friday afternoon or during the early evening hours. I don’t have great confidence yet, but it’s possible that some sort of line of storms will push through the area from west to east during the evening commute, and disrupt the start to the weekend. We’ll keep an eye on that. Some rain chances will linger Friday night but generally, by Saturday morning, the upper-level system will have moved on.
Saturday and Sunday
The weekend should see partly sunny and warmer skies. Look for highs in the mid-80s on both days, and sultry springtime lows only dropping to around 70 degrees. With dewpoints in the upper 60s, it will definitely feel pretty humid after winter in Houston. It’s good for the skin, I guess.
Next week
Most of next week should see additional warm and humid weather with highs generally in the mid- to upper-80s and warm nights. We may briefly see some drier air on Monday night and Tuesday with a weak front, but it will not be much to write home about. Some kind of front may push through next weekend to bring cooler weather by Sunday or Monday, but since that’s 10 days out our overall confidence is fairly low.
Welcome to the March SCW Q&A, where we tackle your questions about the weather, climate and how things work around here. You can submit your questions via the Contact link on the blog home page, or by leaving a question in the comments below.
Let’s get to it!
Q: Can you settle a bet for me? My friend and I have been arguing about whether it has been getting warmer sooner in Houston. He’s lived here 30 years, I’ve been here 20 years, so we both think we know what we’re talking about. I say it’s gotten warmer sooner, he says no. Do you have data to prove one of us is right? Preferably me?
A: We here at Space City Weather do not condone gambling, but in this instance, we will make every effort to ensure a victor is decided. So I guess the first way to go about this is to ask, “What is ‘warmer?'” What’s our definition? Are we talking first 80 degree day? 90 degree day? Last 40 degree night?
Let’s start with 80 degree days. The date of our first 80 degree day of the year has been steadily increasing over the last 50 years.
The top line shows the first day of 80 degree temperatures in Houston, and the 5-year moving average. It had been around February 18th in 1974, whereas today it’s closer to the last week of January. (NOAA)
In 1975, the average first 80 degree day would have occurred around February 18th. In 2025, that has moved up by over 3 weeks. For 90 degree days, it has similarly advanced forward, with the average first 90 degree day occurring around May 8th in the 1970s to mid-April today. Our last 40 degree night? In the 1970s it was April 28th. Today, it’s April 13th.
So, yes, reader. It’s not your imagination. Even if we look at this in several other ways, it has been getting warmer earlier in the year, especially in the last 30 to 50 years here in Houston.
–Matt
Q: I was wondering about long range weather forecasts. When you say there is a strong signal that a cold front or other weather event will happen 7 to 10 days out, what is the signal? Is it just a lot of data points that the models see as a pattern, maybe that it recognizes?
A: The signal is just our Spidey senses tingling. No, but seriously, this is a good question. When we’re looking out in more of the extended timeframe, we obviously don’t want to portray any degree of overconfidence in a possible forecast outcome. But not all 7 to 10 day forecasts are created equal. In some cases, you will get really good model agreement on an outcome. In other words, we’ll look at several key weather models like the GFS and European models and their ensemble means (when they’re run 30 to 50 different times with some tweaks and averaged together), and also some AI models now. If most of them agree on strong high pressure (warm and dry) or a very stormy pattern, we can say with some degree of confidence that there’s a “signal” for warmer or wetter weather. Or vice versa.
An example of a possibly high confidence signal in heavy rainfall for southwest Louisiana 5 days in advance; over 70% of European ensemble members forecasting 1″ or more of rainfall. (Pivotal Weather)
Now, there will be instances where confidence in an extended range forecast is even lower than usual.
An example of a lower confidence extended forecast where the European ensemble has a wide variance in the location of surface low pressure 8 days in advance in the Plains. (Polarwx.com)
For instance, placement of low pressure is one that is often challenging. We may know there’s a good signal for a storm at a certain timeframe, but we may not have any idea where that storm will emerge. From the image above, we would assume the Panhandle, but there is enough variability in exactly where that ends up that we have low confidence in any details.
So the bottom line here is that every extended forecast is somewhat unique and some periods will have slightly higher confidence than others. One other element that comes into play? Forecaster experience. I spent most of the last 15 years in energy trading environments working on day 10 and longer forecasts, and one of the most critical elements in trying to determine whether temperatures would trend one way or the other was just experience. You can’t track a specific metric to quantify that, but it counts for something.
–Matt
Q. Was this winter more grey than usual? It’s felt especially dreary the past couple months but I don’t know if it’s more cloudy days than usual!
A. Your intuition is good! Let’s look at December, January and February, which is a reasonable definition of winter in Houston. As part of its daily summary, the National Weather Service tabulates (on a scale of 1 to 10) whether a day was generally clear, partly cloudy, or cloudy. Here’s the total number of such days for this winter over the three-month period:
Clear: 19 days
Partly Cloudy: 39 days
Cloudy: 32 days
So by this tabulation, only 21 percent of days this winter were clear, or mostly clear, whereas 43 percent were partly cloudy, and 36 percent were cloudy. Historically, during winter, the split is just about even in Houston, with one-third of days being mostly clear, one-third partly cloudy, and one-third mostly cloudy. There is some subjectivity in measuring cloud cover across an entire area, so we can’t put too fine of a point on things. But yes, I think it’s safe to say this winter was more cloudy than normal in Houston this year But don’t worry, spring is often one of the sunniest times of year!
-Eric
Q: I am reading about mass firings at NOAA. Of course, this concerns me since we live in a hurricane prone area. What can I do as a concerned citizen? Is this situation going to affect your forecasting?
A: So there were a number of firings done to probational employees recently. Unfortunately that took out a number of experienced forecasters and researchers as well as a number of incoming younger talent. The whole thing is tied up in litigation, and some people have been hired back, others hired back and assigned to desk duty.
No matter how you view the issue, it’s really just a mess. In addition to this, a number of employees took the “fork in the road” buyout offer, and additional buyouts are expected to be in the pipeline. This has led to staffing reductions, including here in Houston where our meteorologist in charge, Jeff Evans recently departed. Between the cost-cutting and staffing reductions, we are beginning to see weather balloon data get cut now. On most days, you aren’t going to notice much or any of this. But a couple things are true: Over time, weather forecast quality is going to slowly degrade and during major events, particularly hurricanes, we may begin to notice more significant deviations from forecast because of glaring holes in the data. And this is in a world that assumes no further cuts which seems unlikely. Yes, this will impact our forecasting.
We have already written about our thoughts on keeping NOAA whole. Given the degree of success the NWS and NOAA have had in saving lives, protecting property and positively impacting the economy as a whole, the cost vs. benefit of cutting this agency may actually work against the implied goal of cutting government spending and reducing waste. In other words, these cuts would almost certainly be counterproductive and not work to achieve the stated goals of the current administration. I’m not just saying that as a result bias; the ROI of NOAA is actually remarkable and an example of a government agency being successful in ways that other government agencies should strive for. And in a place like Houston, which is the most disaster-prone region in America, we should be the ones screaming loudest to preserve it wholly.
So what can you do? Start by calling your congressional representative and explaining this. Feel free to cite our work on the matter. Educate and inform friends and family. Encourage others to speak up about it. Attend town halls with representatives. There are about eleventy billion priorities for both conservatives and liberals right now, but this is one of the rare ones that should enjoy strong bipartisan support and be non-controversial. If you need to cut debt, you don’t just take an axe to everything; you try to target your cuts to achieve the maximum cost savings with least collateral damage. And broad cuts to NOAA runs against that philosophy.
-Matt
Q. I followed your instructions from back in January about how to fix the problem of not getting notifications from your app on my iPhone, and it worked for a while. I deleted it, reinstalled it, and for a couple of weeks, notifications flowed – until they didn’t. I deleted again, reinstalled again, same thing. What’s going on?
Q. Recently, I quit getting your daily email with the latest blog posts. I’d been getting this regularly for a long time but it suddenly stopped. I re-entered my address in the field on the blog’s home page, but that didn’t help. Eventually I used another email address and that worked, but I’d really rather have your latest forecasts come to my regular address. Help!!!
A. There’s a great line from a classic Paul Newman film, 1967’s “Cool Hand Luke”: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” It fits for us, as two of the ways we get our forecasts out are failing to communicate with some of you. For one, a real fix may be imminent. For the other … not so much.
The app notifications problem turned out to be caused by an old version of the platform our developer, Hussain Abbasi, uses to build and maintain the app. It doesn’t play nice with some of the changes Apple has made in the way notifications work in iOS/ipadOS apps, and he originally planned to move to a completely different tool next year.
But Hussain recently found that the newest version of the development platform actually will do the job, so he is in the process of updating the app with that tool. While it’s not going to be the full rewrite of the app that he’d planned, it’s still taking a while. We hope to have something for you soon. In the meantime, deleting and reinstalling the app will get you a couple of weeks of notifications. Because we don’t require a login, this is relatively painless (but still annoying!).
The email problem is tougher. Being frugal, we have been using the email system built into WordPress. It’s free, as in beer, and in theory it allows for an unlimited number of recipients. Except we have discovered that there is indeed a limit, and we appear to have it hit at 24,700.
What appears to be happening is that every time someone new signs up to get SCW emails, someone else in the email database gets kicked off the list. Re-entering your old address in the home-page form doesn’t help, but putting in a new address should. Of course, you might be kicking someone else off the system when you do!
The fix for us is to switch to a different email system, which we’d have to pay for, and given the number of users we have and the frequency of our emails, that would be very, very expensive. We continue to look at solutions for this, but for now, your patience is appreciated!
