Well the rain totals so far sure have been underwhelming. Personally, I blame Matt. I go to Seattle for a couple of days and everyone starts busting forecasts around here. (Kidding! Matt’s great. Rain events like this are pretty notorious to try and forecast, in terms of pinpointing the heaviest rain, even though conditions really seemed to line up for this one last night). Anyway, let’s discuss what may be ahead.
TODAY
We’re still going to see intermittent periods of heavy rain, even though most of the action so far has been to the north of the Houston metro area. A flash flood watch remains in effect for the entire metro area through 6 p.m. and there’s certainly the potential for an additional 3 to 6 inches of rain between now and Thursday morning. But after this morning’s bust I am in no way calling definitively for that.
THURSDAY and FRIDAY
The greatest threat will end Wednesday night, and atmospheric moisture levels should begin to fall beginning Thursday. However the upper-level low pressure system won’t move off until Friday night or so and this will keep a healthy chance of rain in the forecast through Saturday morning. Highs will be in the 70s, with lows around 60 degrees.
SATURDAY
Rains should end on Saturday, and we’ll probably see the return of our friend the Sun sometime later in the day. Expect highs in the mid-70s.
SUNDAY
With mostly sunny skies expect a warm day, with highs in the low 80s. Most of next week in fact looks to be seasonably warm.
We got HARD rain and thunder and lightning in Cypress! My rain gauge shows 3.5 inches currently and it’s still drizzling.
Lol! Great excuse! Next time just go with “I wasn’t around when that happened”.
Haha exactly.
This morning I thought I heard Travis Herzog say something like “the computer models are worthless this morning”. I never thought I would hear a meteorologist say something like that!
Travis is right. Only can watch radar trends right now.
So Matt drank the Koolaid, or weathermanaid…heh heh.
Headed to Rockport/Port Aranas today…anything to offer Eric?
I appreciate your work.
I’ll be interested in a follow-up posting in a week or so relating what meteorologists think went awry with the models leading into this storm. It looks like areas of NE TX and Northern LA received the -amounts- of rain that were forecast (>10″). So they have a win there. But the “bulls-eye” -location- of modeled rain amounts was generally off. What variable(s) will be shown to be “poorly modeled” in retrospect and specifically in relation to the Houston area?
I second this idea. Everything seemed to line up, yet reality was vastly different. What particular aspect, if any, of the models led to this miscalculation? This would be a great learning experience for us armchair meteorologists 🙂
Well the long range forecasts from last week through monday were off but in last evenings posting, the HRRR model did forecast the rain staying west and north of houston which is pretty much what occured overnight. And the GFS rainfall forecast on monday did show the highest totals over northeast texas extending into west louisiana, with higher totals in harris county north and west of downtown. I think the models got better the closer we got to tuesday.
I figured Matt was out to get me! I had planned on a nice swim but he took that from Me!
J/K Matt is Great and so are you! The best Texas has ever had!
As someone who does computer modeling for a living (chemical plants, not the weather) I know a model is only as good as the data that went into developing it. Also, I can imagine that the weather is an order of magnitude or two more complex than what happens in a distillation column or reactor where the variables are fewer, better measured, and usually under our direct control.
Models are generally useful, but only to a point. And they do cough up fur balls now and then. That’s why I am so suspicious of model-based global warming predictions.