Weather Houston

When it comes right down to it, this forecast is still a hot and dry dominated picture for Houston. Yes, we have a weakness in the heat ridge complex, but no strong tropical feature or cold front to fill that breach. In time, the ridge complex will rebuild, and we will be looking at another long period of 100 degree weather with little chance for any meaningful rain.

There will be scattered showers and thunderstorms around Houston on Wednesday and Thursday. But any rain which does fall will NOT dent the ongoing drought. The computer models show as much as 50 percent of the metro area receiving no rain whatsoever during the next 48 hours. The atmospheric window for precipitation will likely end on Thursday night, as a new air mass with roots in the central plateau of Mexico heads across the Rio Grande River into Texas and Oklahoma. A fair word of warning: the forecast equations predict a very long-lived heat ridge to control much of the U.S. between June 27 and July 7. Once under the influence of that subtropical high, we are likely to see more cases of record heat and no rain.

Wednesday Night: Partly cloudy, warm and humid with scattered showers and thunderstorm along the Gulf Coast and Galveston Bay shoreline after midnight.

Meteorologist Larry Cosgrove has over 30 years of professional experience in forecasting weather. His specialties include prediction of extremes...