We do not relish the changing Thanksgiving forecast for Houston

Houston temperatures have steadily been on an upswing for the last 10 days, climbing from the 40s for three days, into the 60s, the 70s, and finally on Wednesday reaching 80 degrees at Bush Intercontinental Airport. Despite the warming trend, temperatures this month are still running nearly 8 degrees below normal for November. We’ll have another warm day, plus some of Friday, before a decently strong front arrives to bring chilly weather back.

Houston’s temperatures have been climbing for the last nine days. (National Weather Service)

Thursday

Conditions today should be similar to Wednesday, albeit with more clouds and a little wind. Even with mostly gray skies, temperatures today should push into the upper 70s to possibly 80 degrees with plenty of humidity. Some scattered, mostly light showers may move through the region today from the southwest, but any heavier rain should wait until Friday’s front. Low temperatures tonight may not fall below 70 for some parts of the metro area.

This NAM model forecast for dewpoints shows the cold front’s position by 3pm Friday. (Weather Bell)

Friday

The first half of Friday will keep the warm, humid trend going ahead of the cold front. This should arrive in northwest Harris County some time around noon or shortly after, and push through the metro area before sunset. Rain accumulations look to be modest, with one-quarter to one-half inch west of Interstate 45, and perhaps a little more than one-half inch to the east. In any case, we should see gradually clearing skies on Friday night as temperatures fall to around 50 degrees for most of Houston.

Saturday and Sunday

As we’ve been discussing for awhile, this will be a beautiful fall weekend. Look for sunny skies, highs in the 60s, and lows in the 50s. Our string of mostly great weekends this fall continues.

Monday

Warmer, as the onshore flow returns, but this should be a pretty nice start to Thanksgiving week with sunny skies and highs in the 70s.

Thanksgiving week

For a few days we’ve been talking about the timing of the cold front during Thanksgiving week. Well, a front is still coming to Texas by around Tuesday or so, but now some forecast models show it stalling out over our region and dissipating. Let’s be clear: If the front doesn’t make it or dies over Houston, we could be looking at conditions on Thanksgiving similar to the weather today. There’s still plenty of time for the modeling to change, but right now things are trending warmer, with a side dish of rain chances, for turkey day.

The forecast for Thanksgiving is trending warmer. (Weather Bell)

Fundraiser

With that in mind, perhaps it’s better to buy a t-shirt rather than a sweatshirt during our annual fundraiser, which is ongoing through the end of this month. Thank you to everyone for your generous support.

17 thoughts on “We do not relish the changing Thanksgiving forecast for Houston”

    • Yuck is right. I hate cooking Thanksgiving dinner in a hot kitchen and not being able to open windows. 🙁

    • Yuck is right. I hate cooking Thanksgiving dinner in a hot kitchen and not being able to open windows. 🙁

    • Sure! With seven days still to go there’s plenty of wiggle room in the forecast. It’s just that as of now, opposed to two days ago, the models are clearly trending warmer.

  1. Oh my gourd, what a plucking fowl forecast! Thanks. Giving up on cool weather next week. I’m gonna roll with the punches. Dressing light but still stuffing myself. It’s time to talk turkey… Eric and Matt, you are the apples of my pie.
    Too corny?

    • Yuck is right. I hate cooking Thanksgiving dinner in a hot kitchen and not being able to open windows. 🙁

  2. In the old days of Houston, Thanksgiving was always warm and the menfolk would go out to the patio and smoke cigars after dinner, and then stroll in the back yard to do some bird watching. This year Thanksgiving is late, so the retailers have been going crazy trying to have early Black Friday sales.

  3. I personally wouldn’t mind a nice warm Thanksgiving even if the “R” word does manage to come to fruition. Spending many Thanksgivings in Denver when the weather was not so nice makes one appreciate the milder climate. All this said…won’t shock me at all to see another swing in guidance. In Colorado a slight shift in track could mean the difference of a little moisture and temp change to heavy snow and much colder temps. Nice not to have such an issue like that here…most of the time anyways.

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