Pleasant weather—for June—through the weekend for Houston

Note: Sorry for the late post this morning but for personal reasons I had to stay up very late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. Fortunately the region’s weather is most benign now, and will be for several days.

Wednesday through Friday

With high pressure and northeasterly winds, Houston will have a few pleasant days to end the week. Highs will be warm, around 90 degrees, but drier-than-normal air will allow for evening temperatures to cool off into the upper 60s to around 70 degrees, and the lower humidity levels will make for pleasant mornings and evenings. Skies will be sunny, with no chance of rain.

Saturday

Another nice day, but we’re going to see the return of southerly winds sometime on Friday night or Saturday, which will begin the process of raising humidity levels and, eventually, rain chances. The day should be mostly sunny with highs near 90 degrees.

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Soggy weather turning sunny for Houston

The end of what has been a wet week is near. The Houston region has generally received from 2 to 8 inches of rain during the last seven days. Although the rains did cause some isolated flooding and cancel some outdoor events, by and large they were beneficial—quelling what had been an emerging drought just as we’re entering the warmest months of the year. Here’s a look at accumulations during the last seven days.

Seven-day rainfall accumulations. (NOAA)

Today

The radar is largely clear this morning, and skies are partly to mostly sunny across the region. While atmospheric moisture levels have come down, they’re still high enough that we should see some scattered showers and thunderstorms develop later today into this evening. Accumulations should be slight, except possibly for a few isolated locations. Highs in the upper 80s.

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Space City Weather has a sponsor for all of hurricane season—Reliant

Welcome to the beginning of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season! This year I’m thrilled to announce that Space City Weather has teamed up with an Extreme Weather Partner, Reliant, for the entire six-month season. And that’s a good thing, because although we don’t put too much stock into seasonal forecasts, there are some reasons to believe this season may be fairly active across the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea.

As part of our agreement, Matt and I will be writing a handful of posts during the next six months about extreme weather, and some of the options residents have to prepare for hurricanes, power outages, and other weather-related problems that can arise in Houston. Beginning with this one, these will clearly be marked as sponsored posts, but will be written by us, for you.

Outages

To kick off hurricane season, we’re going to delve into the topic of power outages and generators. Aside from life-threatening hazards and damage to one’s home or business, outages are among the most significant inconveniences during inclement weather. Anyone who lived in Houston during the aftermath of Hurricane Ike will know this well. Outages can be dangerous, too, as people sometimes attempt to operate gasoline-powered generators indoors, or take other extreme measures.

(We Energies)

When the power goes out, thanks to the Internet, it is now easy to report the outage and get an update on when service is most likely to be restored. For most of Houston, the “poles and wires” infrastructure that delivers power to customers is CenterPoint Energy. They are the conduit for power provided by retail electricity providers like Reliant.

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Another stormy day possible for the Houston area Monday

Sunday produced widespread, heavy rain across the Houston area, with generally 1 to 5 inches. Accumulations were greatest near Galveston, and just to the southeast of the Houston area. Some of the storms were quite ominous, such as the clouds depicted in this photo from the Galveston-Port Bolivar Ferry System. Others, such as a large system that moved through downtown during the afternoon hours, produced a lot of lightning.

Boats in the Galveston-Port Bolivar Ferry system sheltered briefly during Sunday’s storms. (Twitter)

The conditions that produced these storms, particularly a moist atmosphere and slow-moving upper-level low pressure system will remain in place today, so we can expect another wet day before we begin transitioning to drier weather later in the week.

Today

As the upper-level system slowly moves from west to east across the region, we’ll see another wet day—especially later this morning and into the afternoon hours as daytime temperatures move into the mid- to upper-80s. Some regions could see another 1 to 3 inches, with greater localized amounts, especially to the east-southeast of Houston, from Galveston to Baytown. Given the already wet soils, we’ll have to be more concerned about the potential for flash flooding today. We’ll keep an eye on things.

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