Slightly cooler this weekend, with continued rain chances

The intensity of showers near Sugar Land and Pearland on Wednesday afternoon surprised me somewhat, as isolated areas saw in excess of three inches of rain along the sea breeze boundary.

Thursday

We’re going to see warm conditions again today, with high temperatures likely rising into the low- to mid-90s. We could again see some sea breeze shower activity this afternoon, with some scattered storms. However I would be surprised if the storms were quite so intense as those on Wednesday, which necessitated a flood advisory. In any case, expect any storms to die down in the early evening hours with the loss of heating.

Friday through Sunday

For this weekend, alas, a cold front appears likely to stall out well before reaching the greater Houston metro area. At the same time some lower pressure will move in from the east, into the upper Texas coast, and draw upon moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. The net effect of this for Houston is that high temperatures should be around 90 degrees this weekend, under partly to mostly cloudy skies, with summer-like humidity. There will be periodic, scattered rain showers as well, although most areas will likely see less than 1 inch of rain in total.

Next week

It’s looking increasingly likely that another cool front next week, which we had some hope might reach the Houston area, now will come up short of the region as well.

The likely result is that Houston sees some of the instability moving downstream from this front, in the form of showers and thunderstorms, and continued high temperatures around 90 degrees. Fall, it seems, is not yet ready to fall into Houston. As we’re still about 10 days away from the typical first cold front, perhaps that is to be expected.

Posted at 6:50am CT on Thursday by Eric