Rain chances returning, but totals staying low

Last week’s weather was super spectacular with sunshine nearly every single day and pretty seasonable temperatures too. This week’s weather will be about the opposite with only one day of abundant sunshine (that’s today) until the weekend. In between today and Saturday will be a few storm chances, gusty winds, the return of clouds and humidity, and warmer temperatures too. Highs will warm into the mid-to-upper 70s late this afternoon with a few late-day clouds returning. Today’s late-day clouds will mark the changes that’ll hang around for the rest of the week. With partly-to-mostly cloudy skies tonight, overnight lows will only dip into the mid-50s Tuesday morning and additional cloud coverage will keep highs in the mid-70s tomorrow. Gusty south winds will be as high as 20 MPH today but will gust as high as 30 MPH tomorrow which will pull humidity into the atmosphere pretty quickly. The dry line, a typical spark for severe thunderstorms in Texas this time of year, is going to be active every single day. Fortunately, the dry line should stay mostly west of our area Tuesday. Yes, a stray storm or two could approach near sunset Tuesday or even into Tuesday night, but most of us should remain rain free with chances only near 30%.

Tuesday’s storms, should they happen, may contain hail and gusty winds. Pretty much every day of storm chances this week will carry a hail and wind gust risk, but the overall severe weather risk is thankfully staying limited. Wednesday’s storm chances drop to 20% since the dry line storms should remain well west of our area, but there could again be a stray late-day or early evening storm moving through. The best rain chances come Thursday and Friday. The dry line on Thursday will come closer to our area with an approaching cold front from the north joining the dry line to increase the storm chances and the storm coverage. Thursday’s storms could be severe, but the dry line won’t be very “sharp”, meaning a big dew point difference across the dry line over a short distance, so that may limit the severe weather threat somewhat. Scattered afternoon showers and storms Thursday will turn to another chance for a few scattered storms Friday as a cold front swings through. Friday’s front could bring strong storms too but we’re generally only expecting a few stray storms here and there. High temperatures Wednesday through Friday will warm into the low-to-mid 80s with morning lows staying quite warm in the upper 60s.

Friday’s front clears the area in the afternoon and evening. The gusty south winds around for the majority of the work week will turn northerly Saturday and Sunday which will cause temperatures to drop and humidity to (thankfully) skedaddle. Friday’s front should clear through the area without stalling out so that means we’ll likely have a completely dry weekend with the return of sunshine and with highs only warming into the upper 60s and low 70s, but some forecast model data is hinting that tropical moisture from Baja California may move across Mexico and into the state either Saturday or Sunday. This could bring us storm chances to close out the weekend, but it’s more likely than not that the system moves too far to the south to bring us much, if any, weekend rain. Through Sunday, rainfall totals will likely stay below a quarter-inch, but downpours within thunderstorms could boost some totals on an isolated basis too.

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