Well, we failed to officially hit 100 degrees in Houston this weekend, instead topping out with a pair of 99s on Friday and Sunday, sandwiching a 98 in there on Saturday. The heat will continue this week, though we’ll likely shave at least a couple degrees off things. That makes your author happy because, conveniently, the Lanza household is dealing with a partial AC outage this morning. Yay.
Monday and Tuesday
More of the same, really. Sun, some clouds, and highs in the mid to upper 90s. Rain chances aren’t zero, but they’re awfully close.
We are already seeing some Saharan dust in the area, and as we move into Tuesday, it will become a bit thicker as another surge of dust arrives in Texas. That may subside a bit on Wednesday morning before additional dust later Wednesday and on Thursday. Look for haze, less blue sky, and maybe some more interesting sunrises and sunsets. Those of you that have respiratory ailments that flare up when these hit should be ready for a couple unpleasant days.
Wednesday
Our next reasonable chance of at least some rainfall comes on Wednesday. If you’re choosing cities for your fantasy rainfall battles on Wednesday, I would probably still skip Houston, but the chance is closer to 10 percent than zero. Look for mid-90s. Southerly winds will continue around 10 to 15 mph, gusting 20 to 25 mph at times.
Thursday and Friday
We have a bit of a mixed bag to close the week. For now, I’d expect temperatures to bounce back a degree or two, with highs in the upper 90s for the most part. Rain chances remain at a paltry 10 to maybe 20 percent on Friday.
You can see that expected rainfall over the next 7 days continues to look abysmal. That said, I do think a couple locations may do better than what is shown here, so we’ll hold out hope that some of us get lucky.
Beyond Friday
The weekend gets a little more interesting at least. We will have strong high pressure anchored over Kansas, which is a bit farther north than what we dealt with this weekend. This will allow for continued hot weather, yes, but there may be some “noise” that can sneak in underneath the high.
So I would say that rain chances may actually improve a bit this weekend into early next week. There are some signs of a weak “backdoor” cold front trying to slide in from Louisiana on Sunday or Monday thanks to a pretty strong trough in the atmosphere along the East Coast. Whether that gets here or not is TBD, but just having that in the neighborhood may be enough to trigger some scattered downpours at least.
Bottom line: Rain chances look better this weekend, though still not especially high, and it will remain quite hot.
Tropics
The National Hurricane Center is outlining an area in the western Caribbean for possible development this week.
While this probably is something to at least monitor, I don’t think there is a lot of concern about this here. With that very strong ridge over the Central U.S., that argues that whatever happens there will likely stay suppressed to our south. Still, we will keep an eye on things just in case.
It hit 100 at my house….just east of IAH!
104 at my house. They need to stop using IAH as an official site.
It was 100* in Katy too. But the dry hot wind was the worst part of it.
😂 I knew I felt an infinitesimally small “cold snap” over the weekend! The slight arthritis in my thumb area told me so! 😂
Matt, Clearly the weather gods are messing with you—hence the A/C issues.
Good luck!
First, I’m sorry to hear of your partial AC outage, Matt. It is never a good thing or time for that to happen.
My air handler started falling apart summer 2020 (height of the pandemic) so I feel your pain as Bill Clinton would say. The compressor conked out in January 2015 so having it die in our winter was actually the best of a bad situation.
Wishes for a speedy recovery of that AC system! While it didn’t make it to 100, 99 sure felt plenty warm. Had a great laugh at your “fantasy rainfall battles” line. That’s pretty much what we have: fantasy rainfall.
It hit 99.7 in my back yard yesterday.
How much do we have to pay this blocking high pressure to go away?
Ya’ll can blame me for the lack of rain, I bought 2 new rain barrels a couple of weeks ago. Ugh!!! If this gets any worse I promise I’ll disconnect them and store them in the garage.
Thanks for posting all of the no hype weather situations. I have allergies and asthma and I can tell you that I look forward to the Saharan dust I can always take more medication. The reason I look forward to this is because it is a hurricane killer that and the high pressure. Anything that kills hurricanes including windshear I am a big fan of.
my thermometer said 103 this weekend.
Sorry to hear about your AC problems – as always, putting in a recommendation for Thomas and Sarah at Heights AC. They are great at what they do and all around good people. I don’t work there… I’m just a fan. (Get it…. a fan…because they do AC work. Okay, I’ll see myself out.)
When can we expect the Saharan dust to move on away from our area?
Ugh, looks like an Omega Block pattern. No wonder we are going to be hot all week with no rain.
98, 99, 100 … when things are that hot, a few degrees difference doesn’t really matter. Anything over 90 and I might as well be on fire.