HOUSTON – RECAP OF THE WEEKEND
If you woke up Sunday morning, stepped outside with your cup of joe, and were met with a downright chilly north wind, you weren’t the only one.
That’s because Saturday evening was packed full of crazy weather.
Houston and several surrounding counties were under a Tornado Watch during the afternoon, with a line of storms that dumped heavy rain, and hail, and produced some gusty conditions. We also dropped from 82° to 60° in a matter of minutes as rain-cooled air poured in.
But behind all of that messy wet weather, was a strong cold front.
That cold front filtered in even more cold air overnight Sunday, as we barely stayed at 51° for a low.
A high-pressure system is working its way in behind that cold front.
This high will keep us in northerly winds for at least 24 hours as it continues sliding to the southeast across Texas.
EXPLAINER
High pressure compresses air down to the surface, limiting cloud growth since a parcel of air needs to rise to form a cloud.
As we headed to bed Sunday night, cloud cover began to decrease further throughout the night.
If the winds can drop below 10 mph this evening, the clearing skies will lead to additional radiational cooling.
This means that heat from Earth’s surface will escape back into space, effectively cooling us down even more.
So, with that being said, Monday morning when you woke up, you may have noticed that it was even cooler than Sunday morning!
Here’s what we saw for Monday morning’s low:
It felt more like WINTER than Spring! Now THAT is chilly compared to Sunday morning.
You may not want to put those jackets away just yet; we’ll do it again on Tuesday morning as well.
QUESTION
When is the last time or latest day that Houston has seen 40° temperatures this late in the season?
Well, after searching through a lot of data, I’ve come up with an answer...
It’s not uncommon to see these chilly temperatures this far into the Spring season.
Since the weather pattern is usually still active throughout the season, we can still see 40° temperatures even into the first days of May.
Typically, we don’t see temperatures dip below 50° once we get halfway through May, so we only have just over a month before we can say goodbye to such cool lows.
I also want to point out that in my search, I even saw temperatures in Houston reach BELOW 40° during April in previous years. Thankfully we won’t be as cold - sorry winter lovers.