I lacked the heart to post an update this morning about weather conditions for the 2017 Houston Marathon because, well, the forecast was really rather grim. Grim as in warm—or perhaps even really warm with race time conditions in the 60s, rising into the 70s. I’d hoped that maybe, just maybe, the 12z models that came out this afternoon would offer some hope for a cooler race day.
I’m happy to report that the outlook is a tiny bit better.
As ever there is extreme caution required when considering long-range forecasts, especially at 12 days out. However temperatures in winter are a little bit easier to forecast than, say, a hurricane. That’s because a hurricane is a relatively small meteorological phenomenon, which can be perturbed by relatively small changes. Temperatures are largely controlled by very large upper-air patterns, which are a little bit more predictable. And in this case the global models are showing a rather large area of high pressure building over the United States next week, for much of the central and eastern United States. This will bring temperatures up.
If you click the graphic below (which shows the GFS model forecast for daily temperature anomalies for the next 16 days) to enlarge it, it should make a little more sense.

(Space City Weather is sponsored by Westbury Christian School for this month)