Storms this morning have generally dropped 1 to 2 inches across northern, eastern and southeastern parts of the Houston metro area. But the good news is that these storms have been fairly progressive, allowing them to move through instead of setting up shop and not really budging for hours.

In the next few hours we’re going to see deep tropical moisture moving into the upper Texas coast generally in an area between Houston and Beaumont, and on the radar you can see a long tail of moisture moving north-northeast. These areas definitely don’t need the rain, but they have not been hardest hit in recent weeks so they can probably handle an additional 2 to 4 inches as this system continues to move to the north-northeast.

 

Some areas of west Houston are now reporting some welcome sunshine, and I expect most of the metro area to gradually clear out over the next few hours (expect for east-northeast Houston) as the first round of storms lifts out of the region. However an unstable, moist airmass remains over much of Texas. Forecast models suggest another broad area of storms is likely to develop to the west-southwest of Houston later today, and possibly move into the metro area by late afternoon or early evening hours. My biggest concern is that these storms may move directly over the areas hardest hit by Brazos River flooding. In any case, this second system could bring locally heavy rainfall and we can’t be sure these storms will move as progressively as this morning’s rains have.

So if you’re rain free now, enjoy. Unfortunately it probably won’t last. We’ll continue updating as we know more.

Posted by Eric Berger at 10:50am CT on Thursday

 

Good morning. As Matt wrote last night, there’s more rain to come for Houston during the next few days, and an already waterlogged region faces still more flooding. It is not a happy situation.

As we’ve expected, upper-level low pressure is combining with a strong southwesterly flow to drive showers and thunderstorms this morning. During the pre-dawn hours this produced an additional 1 inch of rain along Spring Creek, generally in northern Harris and southern Montgomery counties, which had already received as much as 6 inches on Wednesday evening. Both Spring Creek and Cypress Creek, in the area, are near bankfull. The West Fork of the San Jacinto River has returned to major flood levels. And southwest of Houston, of course, the Brazos River remains at historically high flood levels (it crested at 54.78 feet last night).

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Storms are firing up along a boundary just to the north of Houston this evening, especially over areas from The Woodlands to Conroe. The National Weather Service has issued a flash flood warning for this part of the region until 6:45pm CT. This means flooding may quickly develop as rains continue.

 

It appears as though these storms will continue to develop over primarily the northern Houston metro area this evening, north of Interstate 10, before tapering off tonight.

However it seems likely that another, more organized system will move into the Houston region from the west on Thursday morning, bringing considerable rainfall, certainly at least a few inches and more in isolated areas. Although this is far from a certainty, we are going to have to watch closely for more flooding tomorrow.

Posted at 5:20pm CT on Wednesday by Eric Berger