Hot Weather to Continue through the weekend

Ever since Hurricane Dolly moved inland across south Texas, a large ridge of high pressure has dominated the weather over southeast Texas, keeping afternoon highs in the mid-upper 90s with heat indices's over 100 the past several days. Interestingly enough however, a rather stiff southerly breeze during the afternoons has helped keep ozone levels in the good range with no bad air days for the past week. I am planning on launching a ozone/radiosonde tomorrow at 1pm so it will be interesting to see the profile over the region. I will post the data plots once they become available.

We did see some isolated convection yesterday afternoon across Chambers and Liberty counties as a mid-level disturbance pumped some higher moisture levels out of the western gulf and into the region; however a very strong mid-level cap inhibited most of the shower activity one would expect from precip-water values in the 1.8-2.0'' range.

Both the 12z and 18z GFS model runs show building 500mb heights over the central plains down into southeast Texas with a 594DAM center located over Arkansas, Missouri, and eastern Oklahoma. This along with dew points forecast to drop into the mid 60s over much of the region should easily allow temps to warm to at or above 100 degrees Monday afternoon.

Some relief could be in the forecast starting Tuesday as models bring increased moisture on the east side of an inverted trough which will be moving inland across the upper/middle Texas coastline Tuesday/Wednesday of next week.

GFS Forecast Surface Temps 00z Tuesday (6pm Monday)



NWS Weekend Outlook