Rain is finally gone for a few days. Slightly "cooler" air ahead. Watching the tropics.
The rain is finally gone! After over a full week of daily rain chances, a drier weather pattern is moving into the area. It's still muggy this morning though, with temperatures and dewpoints in the lower 70s. Drier air will be gradually filtering into the area, but we have one more hot day ahead of us. Afternoon highs today will be in the upper 80s and lower 90s, with heat index values again in the 95 to 100 degree range.
As drier air moves into the area, we will also get a break from the mugginess, in addition to the rain chances. That means temperatures will relax a bit as well, especially during the overnight. After today, afternoon highs drop back into the low to mid 80s as we go through the week, with overnight lows in the low to mid 60s. There will likely be several mornings this week that we start out as low as the upper 50s in many locations. This will be a welcome break from the overnight lows in the 70s that we have had the past several nights! Rain chances stay gone for much of the week, not returning until the weekend.
A good bit of our focus at the forecast desk this week will be on what happens later this week in the Gulf of Mexico. We are watching a disturbance in the Bay of Campeche that is already showing signs of increasing convection near it. It's not terribly organized yet, but the National Hurricane Center has increased the odds of development into a tropical depression or greater to 50% over the next five days. It's not a guarantee that it will formally develop into a classified tropical system, but the odds are increasing.
The two main global models we use for the tropics, the GFS and the Euro, both show the potential for a weak tropical system to develop in the western Gulf. The Euro is weaker with it and tracks it more toward the Texas coast while weakening, while the GFS (while still not terribly organized) is just a little stronger with it (likely a tropical depression or lower-end tropical storm) and takes it on a more northward path toward the north-central Gulf Coast. We get the idea that, if it does formally develop, this would be your typical June system in the Gulf... lopsided with almost all the impactful weather east of the circulation, and intensity likely not getting all that way up there. We will still be watching it carefully though. Should the more northward solution verify, there is the potential that this may impact our weather here locally toward the latter part of the weekend and the start of next week.