Bitter cold weather arrives in Houston, with roads iced over

Good morning. Winter Fest 2021 has arrived in Houston, complete with frigid temperatures, snow, sleet, freezing rain, howling winds, and power outages. It is everything we expected and dreaded.

An extremely cold air mass has descended upon the area and dropped temperatures to 20 degrees or below for nearly everywhere, including the coast. With the wind chill, it feels like 0 degrees for inland areas and 5 to 10 degrees elsewhere. Wintry precipitation overnight, a combination of primarily snow and sleet, has covered most area roadways with a sheen of ice. Travel today is a bad idea.

Monday

High resolution models show precipitation ending from west to east this morning, and likely moving east of the Houston metro area by around 9am. This will not preclude the possibility of some snow flurries redeveloping later this afternoon. Unfortunately, temperatures are unlikely to recover much today, with highs perhaps in the low to mid-20s across the region. The ice on roadways is not going anywhere, any time soon.

We still expect an extremely cold night across Houston, with temperatures likely ranging from about 5 degrees over inland areas to around 20 degrees along the immediate coast. These will be the region’s coldest temperatures since at least 1989, and for some areas possibly much longer than that.

Tuesday

After a bitterly cold start to the day, sunshine will help lead to modest warming as winds shift to come from the east. By Tuesday evening, we anticipate that temperatures will climb above freezing for areas south of Interstate 10. Temperatures on Tuesday night really will not fall much as the onshore flow kicks in.

Wednesday

Sunshine will go away by Wednesday, as moisture levels rise in the atmosphere and the next front approaches. Most of the metro area should reach highs in the upper 30s to low 40s on Wednesday (the coast will be warmer still), although areas north of Conroe may remain stubbornly near freezing. As precipitation chances increase on Wednesday, it appears that most of the area will see rain, but we have concerns about freezing rain in Montgomery County, and points north, both on Wednesday morning and any lingering showers Wednesday night.

Thursday

Another very cold day, with most of the region likely only reaching a few degrees above freezing. However, we think this probably will be warm enough to melt any ice on the roads by mid-morning or so in the metro area, with some caveats about the potential for lingering ice near and north of Conroe. Much of the area will see a hard freeze on Thursday night, with lows dropping into the 20s.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday

As high pressure settles in we’ll finally a see a definitive warming trend heading into the weekend, with highs in the 40s on Friday, and reaching the 60s for most areas by Saturday.

Power outages

There are two sets of power outages this morning. One is due to ice accreting on power lines, and this is affecting about 5 percent of homes in the Houston area. In addition to this, there have been rolling blackouts ordered ERCOT across the entire state that should last about 15 to 45 minutes at any one location.