Houston to sizzle on the Fourth before rain chances increase due to remnants of Hurricane Beryl

In brief: Happy Fourth of July! We have hot and sunny weather on tap for the holiday to celebrate the birth of America, and Friday will be hot as well before rain chances increase due to the movement of Hurricane Beryl into the Gulf of Mexico this weekend. It still appears as though the system will track well to the south of Houston, with the only major impact being the potential for rain.

Thursday

High pressure will remain in place for a couple of more days, and that means mostly sunny skies and soaring temperatures in early July. Look for highs today in the upper 90s for much of Houston, away from the coast, with generally light southerly winds. There will be about a 10 percent chance of showers this afternoon along the seabreeze. By the time of fireworks this evening, temperatures will still be in the upper 80s, at least. Lows tonight will only fall to about 80 degrees.

Friday

Another day a lot like Thursday.

Saturday and Sunday

The forecast for the weekend and next week is predicated on the outlook for Hurricane Beryl, discussed below. Our confidence is increasing in this forecast, but it is possible there are still some subtle changes. Anyway, skies should be partly sunny on Saturday, with perhaps a 50 percent chance of light to moderate rainfall. Temperatures still have a chance to hit the mid- to upper-90s for some inland locations. Sunday will see partly to mostly cloudy skies, with highs in the low- to mid-90s. There is, again, a healthy chance of light-to-moderate rainfall.

Next week

The remnants of Beryl, and tropical moisture from another disturbance, should bring mostly cloudy skies and lower temperatures for much of next week. Daytime highs probably will be in the range of the upper-80s to lower-90s. Each day will have a medium to high chance of rain, with the potential for tropical downpours. In terms of rainfall accumulations, I’m not seeing any extreme signal that will lead us to issue an alert on our Space City Weather flood scale, but that could change. Overall, I expect much of the area to pick up 2 to 4 inches of rain next week, although that remains a first-order approximation at this point.

Hurricane Beryl

The hurricane is weakening in the face of moderate wind shear, with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph as of 7 am CT. It will reach the Yucatan Peninsula on Friday, and emerge into the Gulf of Mexico on Friday night, likely as a weak to moderately strong tropical storm. Beryl will then have about two days over the southern Gulf of Mexico to strengthen. Seas are plenty warm, but there will be at least a bit of wind shear. Most modeling guidance brings a strong tropical storm or Category 1 hurricane to the western Gulf coast by around Sunday night. We’ll have to see about that.

In terms of track, the most likely landfall position remains somewhere within 50 or 100 miles south of the Texas-Mexico border. However, because this landfall remains about four days into the future, uncertainty remains. It is possible the storm could track more northward, and make landfall along South Padre Island or a bit further up the Texas coast; or further south, in Mexico near Tampico. Regardless, for Houston, the primary impacts are likely to be increased rain chances. For more information on impacts to Mexico and Southern Texas, please see our latest updates at The Eyewall.

We’ll continue tracking all of this today, and if anything significant changes we’ll update the site. If not, we’ll see you on Friday morning.