Good morning, and I hope we all managed okay overnight. The worst of the rain is long past, though we will still have rain chances for a few more hours this morning. Then, we are just setup for a chilly weekend. Let’s walk through things here.
This morning
Radar as of 6:20 this morning shows sporadic showers across the region, with heavier rain marching east into Louisiana. We have one additional batch of heavy rain that stretches from near Victoria southwest to Beeville down in South Texas.
This batch of showers will push through the southeast half of the Houston area over the next 2-3 hours. Once that clears, steady rain should end. I can’t rule out lingering light rain or drizzle the rest of today. But the risk for moderate to heavy rain ends with this last batch pushing through.
Travel
As of 6:45 this morning, there were just shy of 20 high water locations on area roadways indicated by Houston TranStar
The high water locations are pretty evenly dispersed across the region. If you’re out and about early this morning, just keep that in mind and drive carefully. Never go around barricades.
Flooding
Overnight, we saw Keegans Bayou, Halls Bayou, Greens Bayou, Armand Bayou, Little Cypress Creek, and South Mayde Creek come out of their banks. As of 6 AM, several were still out of banks or at bankfull and slowly receding. Cypress Creek, Spring Creek, and Cedar Bayou are all rising but expected to stay within their banks.
The exception to this will be the West Fork of the San Jacinto River.
Because of heavy upstream rains and heavy rains in the area, all that runoff is filtering into the San Jacinto River, and it is expected to crest sometime by Monday or Tuesday in major flood stage at Humble. With the forecast of a 53.9 foot crest, major lowland flooding is expected with several subdivisions impacted. You can see the expected impacts at each level on the NWS website for this particular gage. For reference, this particular location crested just shy of 51.7 feet back in March. So this will be a bit higher.
Rain Totals
Houston officially had 4.31″ of rain on Friday, making December 7, 2018 the 5th wettest December day on record in the city, going back to the late 1800s. It was also our wettest single day since August of 2017, which we all know was during Hurricane Harvey.
Per the Harris County Flood Control website, most of the Houston area received essentially what was forecast. Most places saw 3-5″ of rain, with a few spots seeing more.
With rain totals like this, it’s never how much falls, it’s how much of it falls quickly that really matters and is always the challenge for us in forecasting. Hopefully we made that clear in the runup to this storm. Fortunately, we’ve now got a few days to dry out, with our next rain chance not in the forecast until at least Wednesday night or Thursday.
Really appreciate the overnight updates. Thanks for what you do and how well you do it.
I feel bad for those that don’t have access to such a reliable weather resource. The ones that have access and don’t take advantage need to smarten up.
Have a good rest of the weekend.
Thanks for the update! Have to get from Alvin to Hobby and was already avoiding I-45 due to construction(prob canceled now). Glad to see 35 looks clear and I don’t need to fear more rain. Blessings on your weekend!
Add my thanks. You two did a great job here – timely, measured and accurate. Nice work!
Add my thanks. You guys did a really good job on this one. You were measured, timely and accurate. Well done.
Add my thanks. You guys did a really good job on this one. You were measured, timely and accurate. Well done.
I am very appreciative of you doing all of these weather updates. It really helped a lot with keeping all of those read it , aware of changing conditions.
Thanks. You. Good job. Work strong. I see the report Now.
Major props to you all for your forcasting and reporting!!! That you’d be monitoring the weather through out the night (and not receiving a single penny for it) is HUGE for your fans!!!
Thanks so much for giving us the peace of mind we all need in major weather events!!!!
Just want to say thank you for all the hard work you all do!
You do an excellent job, and using terms the average person understands. Thanks so much
Why is there a black hole of rain gauges centered on 59 and Westpark Tollway?
Most of the gages are located on channels rather than roadways. If you turn on the channel layer on FWS, it becomes more clear why gages are placed in certain places
Thanks guys! I’m still a bit wary of these rain events since Harvey and you guys keeping us informed really helped.
Just moved to Houston not too long ago and discovered this site. This is amazing and I will be looking towards this for any further updates on Houston’s Weather. Loving this city and it’s people!
Thank you! I so appreciate the no hype forecast.