As we wrap up the weekend, a couple rounds of showers and thunderstorms brought some much needed rainfall and a chance to finally wash away that pesky tree pollen! But as you see in the maps below, most of the rain on both Friday and Saturday favored areas north and west of the I-10 corridor.
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While much of the Brazos Valley and western counties picked up anywhere from an inch to two inches of rain throughout the day on Friday, areas south of I-10 including most of the greater Houston metro area didn’t see much rain at all. Less than a half an inch! Normally, when we get multiple chances for rain, some other areas may get a shot at some natural grass fertilizer. However, if you look at the coverage map from Saturday, note the similar pattern that the storms drifted in.
If you look at the two maps, notice that even though the coverage was more spotty with stronger, but more isolated thunderstorms Saturday, they line up almost in the same areas for both days! Some of the reason for that was the overall positioning of the jet stream in the higher part of the atmosphere that was oriented from southwest to northeast. Most of the storms we saw this weekend are what we call in the weather world, “elevated” in nature, which means they aren’t close to the surface thus are more influenced by the steering winds of the jet stream. Contrast that to when a surface cold front plows through and the rain basically follows the direction of where the front is coming in from.
If you put the two maps together, you really see the juxtaposition that southwest to northeast flow of the jet stream and how the storms generally followed that pattern. That’s why when we talk about the “haves and have nots” for rainfall, this is a classic example of what we mean! We will get another round of rain coming next weekend, but there’s some real early summer heat lurking mid-week as well. Break out those flip flops if you’re trying to get a little exercise will social distancing, it’ll be close to record heat in the low 90s!