As of 12:15, the severe weather threat in and around Metro Houston is now pretty much over, as the cold front has swung through the area (with the exception of places like Texas City, Galveston, and Lake Jackson, where that threat will end by about 1 PM). Rain will continue, heavy at times, behind the front. There could also be some thunderstorms still too, but any threat of damaging winds and tornadoes is shifting off to our east and will continue pulling away through the afternoon.
A map of temperatures tells the story quite well.
The cold front knocked temperatures back 20 degrees as it moved through (Weather Underground)
The National Weather Service has expanded and extended the Tornado Watch in Southeast Texas. It now includes essentially all areas north and east of about Sugar Land until 4 PM. A Tornado Watch just means conditions are favorable for possible tornadoes to develop. There’s nothing imminent out there as of this writing, but through this morning, we’ve seen a few storms well northwest of the city quickly flare up and flare back down, showing signs they could be tornadic. So it’s entirely plausible we see a few more spin ups like that occur over the next few hours.
9:40 AM Radar shows squall line west of Houston (Intellicast)
Good morning. A cold front was making steady progress across central Texas at 6 a.m. today and promised stormy weather for the greater Houston region later this morning and afternoon.
Location of the front and main squall line at 6 a.m. (Intellicast)
Today I’m happy to announce that Matt Lanza will be joining me here at Space City Weather. Matt is an experienced meteorologist with a Houston-based energy company.
You may remember that Matt helped me out at the Chronicle, and he shares my no-nonsense approach to writing about weather. Don’t get me wrong, we both love the weather and are fascinated by it. But we’re not going to hype things up when it’s not warranted.
Anyway, Matt’s great. He’s going to cover things on Fridays, and he’ll help me out during significant weather events so I’m not trying to pull 20 hour shifts and the like. I’m really looking forward to the help.
A few words about the site: At this point we’re basically doing this for free, so the best support you can give is to to continuing liking and sharing us on Facebook and Twitter, and share the link to Space City Weather with your friends. You can also subscribe by e-mail in the box on the right side of this post.
In the less than one month since I started this the site has really grown nicely. Eventually we’d like to find a sponsor, but for now we’re focused on making sure we get the basics right, providing the forecast information you need to know about the greater Houston area. There are a ton of apps to get five-, seven- and 10-day weather forecasts. But those come from machines. My goal here is to provide a reality check, and provide more insight than can be gleaned from a single model forecast.
