HOUSTON – The chance for rain and storms for the immediate Houston area remains on the low side for overnight Monday and into Tuesday morning.
Our atmosphere just doesn’t look that great for the development of storms in the area.
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The bigger story is off to the north, where areas of North Texas, Oklahoma, and into the Midwest, have the possibility of all forms of severe weather, including damaging winds, extremely large hail, and a few tornadoes this evening.
Severe risk Monday
Storms are already going west of the DFW metroplex in the Abilene area. These storms have been producing very large hail. One hail report from Jones County, which is one county north of Abilene, shows a 2.75 inch, or baseball-sized hail, fell in a storm that moved through the area Monday afternoon.
These storms will continue to move off to the east and northeast, likely impacting the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex later this evening.
Because of the threat of very large, destructive hail, some in excess of three inches in diameter, a level 4 moderate risk of severe weather was introduced earlier Monday for Oklahoma and extreme North Texas, right along the Red River.
Aside from the hail threat, there is also a risk of tornadoes with this system. The greatest threat for those tornadoes will be across Oklahoma, but North Texas will also have to be watched for any sustained supercell storm that gets going, especially as we get closer to sunset. A tornado threat will also exist across the Midwest this evening and continue into the Ohio River Valley into tomorrow.
The storms that form in Oklahoma this evening will race off to the northeast. The Futuretrack image above shows what the radar might look like tonight at 11 p.m. You can see a pretty substantial looking line of storms in Missouri. These storms will continue to push off to the east overnight.
Houston’s storm chances
Thankfully for the immediate Houston area, our storm chances look pretty small by comparison.
By 11 p.m. tonight, there will be a small line of storms form into the Texas Hill Country and push off to the east. The southern end of these storms could impact areas like Bryan-College Station down to Brenham, but for most of the Houston area, we will stay dry. Any storm north or west of the immediate Houston metro would need to be watched just in case they try to get a little stronger.
One reason storms will have a tendency to weaken as they move closer to southeast Texas is because of what is called a capping inversion. You may have heard it simply referred to as a cap.
A cap is a layer of warm air aloft. This cap acts as a lid, preventing rising motion which is needed for thunderstorms to develop and maintain their intensity.
If we were closer to the area of low pressure, there would be more forcing, or lift, which could weaken and remove that cap. However, the area of forcing is well north of our area, which will keep the cap strong and prevent thunderstorms from being able to develop, or weaken any storm that would try to move into southeast Texas from the west.
Even at 5 a.m. Tuesday morning, as the cold front moves closer to Houston, computer models are struggling to put much rain or storms out at all for the immediate Houston area. There could be a few showers, but rain should stay on the minimal side.