As you may have heard from the rumbling outside your windows, the forward line of showers and thunderstorms associated with an upper-level system is now moving into the Houston area. This is not the main event, however, as stronger storms remain to the south-southwest of Houston and are steadily moving toward the metro area.

Already the National Weather Service has issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for parts of Colorado, Fort Bend, Jackson, and Wharton counties until 12:45pm CT. These storms are bringing heavy rain and wind gusts up to 60 mph.

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As we’ve been saying Houston has to get through one more bout of potentially heavy rain before seeing a reprieve from this wet pattern—and that bout is coming. In anticipation of that the National Weather Service has placed the entire region under a flash flood watch from 10am CT today through midnight.

Although conditions are dry at the surface, just above the surface moisture is starting to stream in from the Gulf of Mexico, and we’re going to see very high levels of atmospheric moisture today. At the same time a large upper-level system is moving in from the west, bringing with it the capability to lift this moisture upward. This lift will help to generate moderate, and then heavy rain later this morning and during the afternoon hours.

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Good morning. A capping inversion has largely held over Houston during the overnight hours, and as Matt indicated yesterday afternoon this helped to weaken a storm system as it moved into the region from the west. As a result the metro area is waking up to light, or no rain at all.

TODAY

This light rain will come to an end later this morning, but what happens this afternoon is anyone’s guess. With a stalled front and some daytime heating we could see development of showers and thunderstorms this afternoon and evening, or maybe not much activity at all. I’m not too concerned. Highs in the mid-80s.

THURSDAY and FRIDAY

We’re going to see a surge in atmospheric moisture levels on Thursday into Friday, which should increase the region’s rain chances for most of the area. Fortunately this is not looking like a washout, with most of the area probably receiving 2 inches of rain, or less, during this period.

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