July 2014: Stalled Front/ Rain Chnaces To End July

[tireman4]

Thundering in the Gulfgate area....................

[Andrew]

Those in Brazoria county need to keep an eye on things. Looks like the outflow from the storms around Houston will collide with the sea breeze moving North.

[kayci]

Thank you for the heads up, Andrew. I was just watching our radar and thinking I should maybe do some sweet talking to the rain to make it come our way, but now I guess I don't have to.

[BlueJay]

No rain for us today (or the past several days). However, it is a cool 87F!

Maybe we will get some of the rain action that is expected later this week.

[Ptarmigan]

Since we had a cooler than normal spring and there is a correlation between cooler springs and major hurricane making landfall on Southeast Texas.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/correlation.png

Yes, I am aware that correlation does not mean causation. It is interesting to note that major hurricanes are more likely to make landfall following a cooler spring. It does not mean that when there is a cooler spring, we are going to see a landfall.

[BlueJay]

KHOU's new website design is jazzy.
I think I like it.

[kayci]

Ok KHOU.... I have NOT had enough coffee in me this morning for yall to be messing with me.... New web site? Typing letters backwards to log in??? Really???? *sigh*

G'mornin weather peeps....

[srainhoutx]

Yep. You guys are not seeing things. A major upgrade with a new banner at the top was completed overnight. For those have trouble logging in, remember to type TEXAS REGIONAL WEATHER backwards in ALL CAPS. Looks nice and thanks to the folks at KHOU that have been working on this for about a month.

[Rip76]

I did notice "admin11" in red, at the bottom earlier.
Dr. Neil?

[srainhoutx]

I did notice "admin11" in red, at the bottom earlier.
Dr. Neil?

That was KHOU folks working on things Rip. I did ask Dr. Neil to join us at some point, but he is enjoying retirement after all and plays golf 3 days a week. I'll put another 'bug in his ear' about it though...

[kayci]

I did notice "admin11" in red, at the bottom earlier.
Dr. Neil?

That was KHOU folks working on things Rip. I did ask Dr. Neil to join us at some point, but he is enjoying retirement after all and plays golf 3 days a week. I'll put another 'bug in his ear' about it though...

As he should be, Doc certainly earned his retirement.

[Rip76]

Thanks,
I'd rather be playing golf too.

[srainhoutx]

It looks like things could become rather busy in the weather department as we end July and start a new month tomorrow. High PW's and CAPE between 2000 to 3000 in summertime tends to suggest possible severe storms and very heavy rainfall rates. Folks back to the Austin Area and on E keep an eye to the skies this afternoon and folks along and S of I-10 really need to monitor developments overnight into tomorrow for the August 1st morning commute. Morning Update from Jeff:

Another rare July cool front heading for the region this morning with the threat for excessive rainfall increasing late today into early Friday.

Weak cool front was located across N TX this morning with a pre-frontal trough located near a Austin to Huntsville line. Fairly widespread development of thunderstorms over N TX overnight has resulted in some flooding due to cell training and slow storm motions. Front will sag southward today and move into SE TX late this afternoon. Surface heating will produce an unstable air mass by early afternoon and expect thunderstorms to develop starting as early as noon in some areas (especially north and east) initially along the seabreeze and outflow boundaries from previous storms and then along the front itself.

Meso and global models are in fair agreement on a band or line of thunderstorms developing from near Centerville to Austin early this evening and sagging southward to near US 59 by midnight. Air mass this afternoon becomes extremely moist with PWS pushing 2.0-2.3 inches and nearly a saturated profile through much of the column suggesting very efficient rainfall production. Front and storms appears to really slow in the midnight to 600am time period between I-10 and the coast and this is the location where we could get into some flooding problems overnight. Extremely high moisture levels will produce very high hourly rainfall rates of 2-3 inches or greater. Meso model depiction of cell training across the southern half of the region tonight does raise some concern, but it is impossible to determine where this may happen at this point. Activity will become highly meso scale driven on outflow boundaries and past experience with such events tends to focus the heavy rainfall a bit southward from where the actual frontal boundary may lie…in this case closer to the coast.

Models are not overly confident on where the actual front will stall Friday into the weekend with some offshore and others near the coast or just inland. Think the boundary will be close enough to continue rain chances especially near the coast for much of the weekend and this could also pile totals up in these areas. Luckily the areas have missed out on the past few rain events and could stand several inches before getting into flooding problems.

Upper level pattern shears out the upper trough along the Gulf coast next week leaving a pronounced weakness in the height field suggesting daily rounds of showers and thunderstorms along the seabreeze front.

93L:
After being nearly completely void of any convection last evening, a few thunderstorms have managed to develop on the southern flank of a well defined low level circulation about 650 miles east of the Windward Islands. This system continues to struggle in the face of a large mass of dry sinking air that ejected out of Africa several days ago known as the Saharan Air Layer (SAL). This unfavorable dry air has become ingested into the northern flank of the circulation resulting in almost no convection in this part of the system, while moisture from the ITCZ to the south has become helping to produce sporadic convection in that section of the circulation. Intensity forecasting models have thus far done a poor job and have been overly aggressive in developing the system and given the current and forecasted hostile conditions across the Atlantic basin any development is expected to be slow. With that said only a slight increase in thunderstorms activity near the center would likely bring the system to depression or storm status requiring warnings to be issued quickly for the Windward and Leeward Is. A USAF WC-130 will fly the system this afternoon as it now falls within range of the aircraft.

[srainhoutx]

MESOSCALE PRECIPITATION DISCUSSION 0236
NWS WEATHER PREDICTION CENTER COLLEGE PARK MD
732 AM EDT THU JUL 31 2014

AREAS AFFECTED...EXTREME SOUTHEASTERN OK/EASTERN TX/WESTERN LA...

CONCERNING...HEAVY RAINFALL...FLASH FLOODING LIKELY

VALID 311132Z - 311502Z

SUMMARY...A SLOW-MOVING SYNOPTIC BOUNDARY WILL CONTINUE TO BE A
FOCUS FOR VERY HEAVY RAINFALL WITH HOURLY RATES POSSIBLY IN EXCESS
OF 2 INCHES. CONVECTION REGENERATING ALONG THE RED RIVER HAS
BECOME A NEW FOCUS FOR FLASH FLOODING WITH WARNINGS BEING ISSUED
BY THE LOCAL WFOS. EXPECT THIS THREAT TO PERSIST THROUGH ~15Z.

DISCUSSION...WATER VAPOR IMAGERY SHOWED A VERY SLOW MOVING
SHORTWAVE CROSSING THE RED RIVER. MUCH OF THE CONVECTION HAS BEEN
IGNITING IN THE VICINITY OF A WEST-EAST BOUNDARY WITH WITH
REGENERATION OCCURRING IN A REGION OF 500 TO 1000 J/KG OF MUCAPE
BASED ON THE 11Z RAP OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS. RATHER IMPRESSIVE 850-MB
INFLOW WAS NOTED FROM THE KFWS WSR-88D WITH VAD WIND PROFILES
SHOWING 30 TO 35 KNOTS OF SOUTHWESTERLY FLOW ADVECTING INTO THE
STORM-SCALE ENVIRONMENT. THIS IS EXPECTED TO PERSIST FOR A COUPLE
MORE HOURS BEFORE THE LOW-LEVEL WINDS BEGIN TO VEER AND DIMINISH
AS THE SHORTWAVE DROPS SOUTHEASTWARD. THIS WILL ULTIMATELY CARRY
THE HEAVIER RAINFALL TOWARD EAST-CENTRAL TX WITH THE ACTIVITY
EXPECTED TO BECOME MORE PROGRESSIVE.

THE 10Z HRRR THUS FAR HAS HANDLED THE ONGOING ACTIVITY THE BEST
WITH EVEN HINTS AT THE REGENERATING HEAVY RAINFALL ALONG THE RED
RIVER. IT AGREES WITH THE SCENARIO OF MAINTAINING DEEP CONVECTION
ACROSS NORTHEAST TX FOR 2 TO 3 MORE HOURS SO THIS MPD ISSUANCE
WILL ONLY BE ISSUED THROUGH 15Z AT THE LATEST.



RUBIN-OSTER

ATTN...WFO...LCH...SHV...TSA...HGX...FWD...OUN...

[srainhoutx]

The 12Z HRRR short range high resolution rapid refresh guidance is suggesting a line of storms approaching later this afternoon/evening.

[BlueJay]

Thanks for all of the updates Srain! I sure hope we get some of that rain today.

By the way, thanks to Tireman for keeping us all up to date when Srain was at the weather conference!

[unome]

we're watering the grass, have been burned here on POPs all week

http://www.harriscountyfws.org/

http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/basicwx/bwxloop_ndfd.html

[djjordan]

[djjordan]

By the way .... I love the new KHOU website!!!! Great job!!!!

[srainhoutx]

I am starting to see a report or two up in the Bryan/College Station area of some isolated flooding of the typical low spots. The higher PW's in this tropical airmass suggest 2-3 inch amounts per hour are not out of the question as the area of storms move SE. Keep an aye on that boundary collision across Waller, Montgomery and Walker Counties in a bit.