Clearer air and lower humidity arrive in Houston today ahead of late weekend rain and storms – Space City Weather

In short: Calm weather, (hopefully) less haze and smoke, and lower humidity will greet us today and most of Saturday. Numerous scattered showers and thunderstorms will bring heavy rain to the area Sunday and Monday. We will again monitor flood risks north of the Houston metro area.

I just want to start with a quick thank you to everyone who responded to our call for help earlier this week for our partners at the University of Houston working on weather messaging research. Nearly 200 of you responded, which is both incredible and overwhelming! The small team of UH researchers is working hard to respond to everyone who responded. They should now receive enough responses to hopefully generate some interesting and useful results. Once again, you are all awesome, so thank you!

Heavy rain update

While most of Houston received little to no rain last night, areas to the north and west were hit with large hail or heavy downpours. There was another 1 to 4 inches of rain at the north end of Lake Livingston. At this point, it doesn’t seem like it can do much for the Trinity River situation (which continues to slowly deteriorate). But we will expect an updated forecast later today. Meanwhile, the Brazos will begin to rise from north to south this weekend and next week.

The ridge is expected to reach Rosharon around Monday, then west of Columbia by Tuesday, with minor to moderate flooding, which will mainly affect low-lying areas and perhaps some roads near the river. The situation is not currently expected to get worse.

Today

Good news today. Air quality should improve. Yes, in recent days there has been smoke from many, I mean *lots* of agricultural fires in Mexico and Central America. This has worsened the air quality and everyone’s mood. With a breeze today pointing offshore, this should hopefully push a lot of that smoke south of here. Hopefully last night’s rain helped too. I’m not promising a day with super clean air quality, but we’re already off to a much better start than yesterday.

Will this end our streak of days without 90 degrees? Probably not. But it could be close. Drier air warms more efficiently than humid air, and there may be just enough of it to push some of us above 90 today, especially in southern I -10. Maybe bet on Hobby Airport and not Bush Airport.

SATURDAY

It should be a pretty calm day. Maybe a pinch or a shower. But otherwise clouds, sun, still not very humid or hot. Morning lows will be in the 60s to near 70, with daytime highs in the mid 80s.

Mother’s Day and Monday

Word to your mother will be that it rains this year. Unfortunately, we continue to see a soggy picture for Sunday. I don’t think all day will be a disaster everywhere, but an umbrella will be a must-have accessory for church, brunch, or wherever your plans take you. Numerous scattered showers and thunderstorms are likely Sunday and Monday. For the majority of the Houston metro area, most of the rain should be manageable. Pools or one or two stronger storms are possible. At the moment, we don’t expect much worse than that. Again, this concerns most of Houston.

That said, atmospheric humidity is at the top of the charts for this time of year, which means we could be talking about heavy precipitation in places. If these rains end up north of I-10 in vulnerable areas of Montgomery, northeast Harris or Liberty counties and points north, we could have flooding issues again. For now, let’s call it 1 to 3 inches of additional rain, with lower amounts possible to the south and higher amounts possible to the north. Keep an eye on the forecast this weekend. We’ll have at least one more update later tomorrow or Sunday morning with the latest.

Rest of next week

Calmer weather is expected to follow Tuesday or Wednesday before more storm chances return, perhaps Wednesday evening or Thursday. We have an opportunity to hit 90 on Tuesday, but our next realistic chance won’t come until next weekend.