We’re seeing some encouraging trends for the rest of Wednesday

Over the last couple of hours, the radar has shown the heaviest rainfall congealing offshore, and this seems to be in response to falling pressures as the tropical disturbance moves north across the Gulf of Mexico. The net effect of this is that the offshore storms are robbing inland storms of moisture, and thus sapping their ability to produce really high rainfall rates like we saw earlier this morning near Wharton. This is good news for the rest of today, although we’re still going to see some scattered storms, and areas immediately along the coast, such as Galveston, may see intermittent heavy rainfall this afternoon.

Most of the region has seen manageable rains today, and rainfall rates below 2 inches per hour. But we definitely saw the bullseyes we feared develop in Wharton, Fort Bend, and Matagorda counties this morning. One gauge north of Palacios recorded 14+ inches of rain, and a pretty large region saw 6+ inches since midnight. These totals are shown below.

The forecast for Wednesday evening through Friday remains tricky. Our best guess is that storms begin to redevelop onshore tonight, but the favored area is probably just east of Houston through the Beaumont area, and into southwestern Louisiana. In Houston, on Thursday, we will probably see less coverage than Wednesday—perhaps quite a bit less. We still have some concerns about later Thursday night and Friday, and we’ll address those in posts to come. My sense, however, is that the worst of this system, in terms of organized activity, is now slowly moving away from the metro area.