Warm weather to be whisked away this weekend

We’ve got one more warm day on tap before cooling off to more seasonable type weather in Houston. That will make four in a row for our area. Let’s explore the details.

Today and Tonight

A mix of a low overcast and some patchy fog around the area this morning. This isn’t a repeat of earlier this week though with dense fog prevalent. That said, we do have some sprinkles or light rain around so roads could be a bit wet in a few spots this morning.

Otherwise, expect a mostly quiet Friday. High temps today will be near 80° in Houston (it’s already 73° as of 7:30 AM). We could see that light rain or drizzle continue. There is a slight chance for a shower I suppose, but it would be most likely up toward College Station or out toward Brenham.

The main rainfall story develops tonight as a cold front sweeps through. Expect showers to become more likely toward sunset. We could see a thunderstorm embedded also, but that would probably be the exception rather than the rule. Rain won’t be terribly heavy and most places should see less than a half-inch, possibly less than a quarter-inch.

Showers continue into the overnight hours before gradually ending from northwest to southeast early Saturday morning.

Saturday

We look mostly good on Saturday with clearing likely taking place pretty fast in the morning. We’ll have a mostly sunny afternoon with just a few high clouds around. You’ll notice it’s a quite a bit colder, with morning lows in the upper-40s and afternoon highs sneaking up to the middle or upper-50s. Saturday night will be chilly with lows in the low-40s.

(Space City Weather is brought to you this month by the Law Office of Murray Newman)

Sunday & Monday

Again, the good news here is that travel looks near-perfect anywhere in Texas and Louisiana. There may be some snow showers Sunday in Missouri if your travels take you there. Christmas Day could see an isolated shower near Brownsville. Otherwise, it looks sunny and dry both Sunday and Monday.

Sunday’s temperatures will warm up into the low or perhaps mid-60s if things come together just right. Sunday night will feature a second cold front. This front has looked less and less impressive since earlier this week. Initially it looked like freezing temperatures would be possible. Now it’s entirely possible that temperatures don’t drop below 40° or even 45° in spots on Christmas morning. Either way, it looks chilly, just not really, really cold. During Christmas Day itself, expect high temperatures to peak around or just above 60° in most of the area.

Beyond Christmas

The pattern turns really messy again after Christmas. If you take a look at the GFS Ensemble model’s forecast for temperatures in Houston, you’ll see the story.

Beginning about Wednesday, the spread in possible outcomes indicated by that chart is impressive. For example, if you look at Thursday of next week, the high temperature potential ranges from as low as about 42° to as high as 75°. Some of this has to do with timing. Some of it has to do with the models struggling to figure out how warm or cold it’s going to get. But you see a trend. We should warm up next week, especially mid or late week, and then turn sharply colder again, probably by Saturday. That likely means showers and thunderstorms again at some point next week, but I won’t even attempt to try and give you details on this right now. We’ll have much more on these changes next week, hopefully with the picture a little clearer.

In the meantime, we’ll take a break for Christmas this weekend and come back at you Tuesday with a good look at New Years. Merry Christmas, and thanks again for reading and for all your support!