Mostly manageable rain today, but additional waves of rain in our future

In brief: Rain has been manageable so far today. We expect more rain this evening, with scattered heavy downpours. Another round of potentially heavier rain is possible on Thursday morning. We’ll maintain our flood alerts as is for now.

Rain has been mostly under control since this morning thankfully. The next wave is coming ashore now at the coast, and even this one is checking in a bit more manageable than it looked this morning.

Still, rain rates around 1 inch an hour or so are likely as this pushes ashore. As it moves north and east, we’ll see most rain impacts on the southeast side of Houston, with isolated to scattered downpours north and west. Total rainfall will be an additional inch or two at the coast and less inland (except in isolated heavier downpours) through this evening. Any street flooding is expected to be more nuisance in nature.

Looking ahead, modeling is suggesting another rather beefy area of rain and storms approaches the area overnight or early on Thursday morning. This would be capable of perhaps another 1 to 4 inches of rain.

There remains enough uncertainty in the models that we use for these type of rain events that I think maintaining the Stage 2 alert for the coastal areas and Stage 1 inland is the right move. One model we track closely during these events suggests as much as 7 to 10 inches could fall in a worst case scenario between Galveston and Port Arthur and southwest Louisiana. I would especially watch the Beaumont-Port Arthur area in this setup. We don’t expect that outcome, but we can’t rule it out entirely. For the majority of metro Houston and suburbs, another inch or two, with some seeing more and some less seems reasonable.

Eric will update us on Thursday morning with the latest regarding the rainfall.