Rainfall has returned:
HOUSTON – We finally are seeing the Stormtracker 2 Live Radar getting some action as the beginning of a weather pattern change that will bring more rain to Houston and SE Texas. You can check out the radar below:
Wednesday’s Forecast:
Wednesday will be cloudy and warm. Temperatures will start in the mid-70s and warm to the upper-80s. We will be tracking showers and thunderstorms through the early part of the day.
These showers and storms are hit-or-miss. It is not a washout with a 40% chance of seeing rainfall. Our chances are highest in the middle of the day.
Halloween Forecast:
Rain really ramps up on Halloween.
Rain chances will move into SE Texas from the Northwest as the front moves in. We could see some showers ahead of the cold front starting Thursday morning. You can see the heavier storms on this computer model image north of the Houston area. This is where the cold front should be situated around 6 a.m. Thursday morning.
By midday Thursday, the front should be approaching the immediate Houston area, accompanied by a line or broken line of showers and thunderstorms.
You can see our computer models really want to bring this line together better once it gets just south of Houston and closer to the coast. We could see some very heavy rainfall in some of these storms. The severe threat looks to be very low right now, but there is an outside chance of some gusty winds and perhaps some hail.
By 5 p.m., the models want to push a lot of the storms off to the east and south of the Houston area. Even if it’s not actively raining streets may be wet. Wet streets would lead to muddy costumes, so if you have a dragging tail or cape with the costume I’d recommend wearing lifts or hemming the bottom so it does not touch the ground.
Nothing looks to be a washout at this time, but earlier that you and the kiddos go out, you’ll have a higher chance to see some spotty showers. By sunset, a lot of the showers will be pushing towards the coast with the front.
It looks like the showers taper off as the night wears on. This means for late night trick-or-treating we will have a higher chance of staying dry.
Dry and Hot October:
Although it’s not ideal to have rain chances return for Halloween, we do need the rain. The dry weather has made it incredibly warm for this time of year. We are currently in 4th place for the warmest October ever recorded. And without a drop of rain this month we are currently the driest October every recorded. This will not last with our rainfall forecast on Thursday.
We should get out of the top ten driest Octobers with the expected rainfall Wednesday and Thursday. Forecast accumulation brings a healthy 0.5-2″ across SE Texas between now and Thursday evening.
Tracking the Tropics:
After a quiet stretch in the tropics, there is an area of broad counterclockwise rotation in the southwest Caribbean Sea that has a 40% chance of developing over the next 7 days. Long range data does have this moving north. We’ll keep you posted if there are impacts to the United States. Hurricane season runs through November 30th.
Time Change:
Don’t forget daylight saving time ends this weekend! Most devices will automatically change this for you, but most ovens, microwaves, old cars and wall clocks will need to be set back an hour before bed on Saturday! This is because 2AM becomes 1AM on Sunday morning, which means we actually get an extra hour of sleep. This is also a good time to change the batteries on your smoke and CO2 alarms.
This extra hour of sleep means big changes for our sunrise and sunset. Early risers typically love this time change because our sunrise is in the 6AM hour starting Sunday. Night owls often do not like the time change as our sunset will also be an hour earlier at 5:32PM.
10-day Forecast:
We have two cold fronts on our 10 day forecast. The first cold front will bring our rain chances for Halloween and lower temperatures for the upcoming weekend.
The second cold front is more uncertain but could potentially be the big fall front we’ve been waiting on. The stronger cold front looks to move in towards the middle of next week dropping highs to the 70s and lows to the 50s.
