All right, good early morning everybody.
A meteorologist Tim Pantages we're
closing in on quarter past the hour here
at 1:00 AM on your Wednesday morning and
we've got showers and storms out there.
A ***** line developing off to
our West that has ignited several
severe thunderstorm warnings.
Still, our main concern is going
to be for some gusty winds,
so let's first get out of the way.
What the warnings that are currently
in effect are across our area and
that's going to be encompassing
all the areas out towards Brenham,
so those actual warnings right now.
Let's put them up here and they'll
pop up across our area,
so we've got them up until 1:30,
so for about another 15 minutes or so,
this could be for Brazos,
Grimes, Waller, and Washington,
affecting over 200,000 people.
Gusty winds.
Notice how elongated this warning Polygon
is another one off towards the West there.
Affecting not as many people at all,
so let's talk a little bit more
about what's going on radar now,
because there is a lot happening
all across our area right now.
Lots of lightning and Thunder.
Very, very heavy rain too.
And what's interesting with
this is if we put it in motion,
say the last two hours,
it's been really moving a lot quicker
over the last couple of hours
picking up that forward momentum.
We've also been tracking the amount
of lightning within these cells.
It's been rather constant,
so it's not been in a strengthening stage.
Of its overall life cycle,
which is the good news?
They're kind of plateauing,
but they do have gusty winds and I
want to show you that feature right
here because we use our velocity
feature that is a radar product that
we typically use to kind of diagnose
whether couplets or spins and the atmosphere.
That's why we call it a rotation detector.
So if we get a little close up,
look of what's going on in
some of these areas,
you can see some couplets for sure,
especially as we get out.
Let's say let's go out
towards the Brenham area.
And you can see there are a few couples
there is zoomed in a little bit too far,
but if we go a little bit farther
out here you can see that there
definitely are some signatures there.
We go, especially off towards the
West West of Brenham right now.
And if we put a couple of those areas
on the map and kind of see what the
speeds would be of some of these wins.
They're rather impressive,
especially out here well West of Brenham.
55 miles an hour. So we're getting
that from the radar site here.
The Colleen radar site.
We're probably like 30 miles
from the radar site there,
so the radar goes out at an angle.
And it's sampling the atmosphere at a height,
so this is not at the surface.
This is a law 55,
but what's going on is that the
very heavy rain is suppressing
those strong winds to the surface,
so it could be that resonating there,
which is why these areas here are
under a severe thunderstorm warning
for the main threat of gusty winds
in excess of 70 miles an hour.
So this is the setup here
for the Brenham area.
Notice the elongation of the warning Polygon
that's for the strong straight line.
Wins that we're seeing here on Radar
indicated just with the Boeing ECHO that's
setting on up out towards Brian and Brenham,
Washington.
Seeing the kind of brunt of it right now.
In fact,
if we go over there on our camera
angle and zoom in on Brenham again,
we can really see that this area
is not only seeing heavy rain,
but also lots of lightning and Thunder.
And if we switch things
back over to the velocity.
See the strongest of the wind,
still just off to the West towards Burton so
they're traveling along 290 near Zionville
Gay Hill and then eventually towards Brenham.
On 36 J there. The junction,
so we'll see some strong winds
there in just a short while.
Bigger picture though when we look at
the radar and look at the Lightning.
Let's go back to our home screen.
We're not overwhelmed with the amount of
lightning like we've seen in past instances.
There's a lot of reasons for this.
Usually get highly electrified storms when
there's a lot of moisture content in the air.
If you're outside today, we only topped
out at 80 degrees officially at Bush,
so and we weren't very humid either,
so we don't have the heat.
We don't have the high humidity either,
so these storms are not able to take
advantage of that and build up vertically.
A lot of these on a vertical section
are going up about 30,000 feet.
Still high,
that's where airlines you know travel,
but usually get 3540, forty five,
50,000 feet.
Get that vertical depth.
Those updrafts can really develop
a lot of friction within the
clouds and electrify themselves,
so we are seeing lightning strikes out
there that you know around 3 to 400 or so,
but nothing terribly impressive really.
Looking at this line here out towards Brian.
Look at this Boeing signature here.
Navasota Keith heavy heavy rain there.
In fact,
let's look at some of the
rainfall rainfall data actually,
let's go back here 1st and just
look at some wind reports possibly.
And I don't see any here in our
area which I'm not really surprised
because we haven't seen the system
over our area for quite some time yet.
But off to the West when it moves
through the Austin area earlier,
we did have some reports like here's
one just South of Austin, thunderstorm,
wind Gust, Bergstrom International Airport.
There.
Fifty 5560 mile an hour winds
certainly were out of the question.
Now,
on radar we've been talking about lightning.
Heavy rain.
And wind, but what's been noticeably
absent is the presence of any hail,
and as I take this off here,
the legend,
you're not seeing any indications
anywhere of there being any hail present.
Good news,
this is not a hail event for us.
We're looking at the gusty winds,
very heavy rain and the good news
with the rain.
We'll go back to the to the radar here to
show kind of amplify what we mean by this.
So we've got radar.
Current image and if we go out
in time or go back in time,
I should say the last two hours.
It's moving very,
progressively quickly through our area.
It was in Austin,
just an hour and a half ago.
Now it's already in the Brenna
Mary Washington County and
it's picking up that forward.
Momentum will be in downtown,
likely within the next 90
minutes to two hours.
In fact, we can put a we'll put
it stopped here. And then we
will put a track on it for you.
So here's what it looks like now.
And we'll put a storm track on it.
And put it out, it's moving it around 60
miles an hour so it has picked up speed.
On this bow here, and we'll move it off.
Into the area here.
So we're getting some of these spots that
are going to be moving in Belleville.
Got about 5 minutes until heads towards you.
129 for Hempstead, Eagle Lake,
just after half past the hour.
149 East Bernard, a spring around 156.
So all within the next hour these areas will
be encountering some of the rough weather.
Gusty winds possibility of some small help.
We're talking pea size that any
at all and really the gusty winds
and a lot of heavy rain too.
Some of the other features
we've got going on here is.
There's one particular cell.
Let's put a scope on that and we can kind
of see what's going on inside the storm.
So check this out.
We can move it along storm path and
we're looking at the velocities here.
Within the storm you can see where there's
greens and Reds greens is going to be
moving towards the radar site Reds away,
so the direction in which
the winds are moving.
Relative to the radar site,
when we get those little couplets,
we'll get the Reds and Greens
close to one another,
and we're not seeing any instances
of that which is good news.
This is not a tornadic event.
It's a straight line,
wind event,
and the difference is that is
that when there's damage,
it's all blowing in the same direction.
With tornado damage,
it's really kind of chaotic and trees
and debris strewn all over the place.
But we're not seeing that in
this particular situation,
and if you are getting wind gusts in fact,
let's look at some of the
velocity signatures once again.
And they're not all that impressive,
just yet.
Some of them may be verifying down to the
ground that are a little bit more impressive,
like let's see here.
Zoom in on some of the brighter spots as
we go out towards the Brian area again.
We'll switch up radar sites.
And we'll put on here.
Some of these areas.
43 mph, 50 mph and notice how down
towards gettings what that's looking like.
Still 50 miles an hour.
So again, as I mentioned earlier,
some of this is mixed up a little bit in
mid levels and it's getting mixed down.
To the surface.
So some of this is translating through
some of these severe thunderstorm cells,
others not so much,
so we'll go back to home here
and see what it looks like.
On the bigger picture. Let's
and we've got that line of
storms in our Western zones.
And it looks like brand new
severe thunderstorm warnings just
outside of our viewing area here.
But the whole line.
Is actually being warned, which is.
If you look at the big picture
here of what's going on in Texas.
I mean, there's just a lot
of activity all up and down.
In fact, the radar sites showing things.
Nationally, you can see all the.
The activity here over the last two hours,
kind of consolidating and picking up
that forward momentum and dropping
its way on off towards the South.
So this is going to be an ongoing
thing for probably the next two hours.
And then really kind of sailing
towards the coastline and eventually
into the open Gulf of Mexico.
So that's the good news there.
Haven't seen any storm reports as of late,
so that's the good news too.
And our local radar is still just
showing the heavy heavy rainfall,
some gusty winds as well.
And lots of lightning too.
This is unfortunately going to
be one of those events that if
you're up watching now and this is
about to head towards your area.
You're probably not gonna get
to bed for the next hour hour
and a half until it blows.
Through it's going to be loud with
the wind gusts with the lightning
and Thunder and of course,
the heavy rain as well.
Something we haven't talked about
yet is the the rainfall totals.
Let's look at just the one
hour precipitation so.
We had talked about how this might
be an issue in terms of some minor
flooding or street flooding because we
were looking at the potential of there
being 2 inch an hour rainfall rates,
which would be the threshold
for flash flood warnings.
We haven't been seeing that,
and here's radar indication.
Over the last hour of rainfall total,
so if you look at the legend up here
2-3 inches maybe if you're lucky,
as radar indicates, out to the excuse me,
the West of Brian Burton area
down to Gonzales along 290,
so not terribly impressive
rainfall totaled as of yet.
Go back to radar.
You can see that the rain when it
is coming down indicated by the
Reds and oranges and maroon colors
is very very heavy and you can see
it a little bit better when we
take the lightning off of this.
Lots of heavy rain here out towards
the Burton area and there's the severe
thunderstorm warnings that we're
still up for another 6 minutes for Grimes,
Waller,
and Washington that's affecting
over 200,000 people,
so keep that in mind there and
you can see this and we look at
those velocity wins once again,
so this is kind of a little bit mixed bag.
It's a little confusing.
We're pulling the Houston radar here.
That's overlapping with the radar
off towards the Austin area.
So if we move it a little bit closer
you can see it switches radar sights.
We're a little bit closer to
this radar site here,
so the Brenham area is getting
a better sampling of the wind
speeds out in this general area.
So if we zoom in over there,
look at some of these.
These wind gusts are a little
bit more impressive here.
We'll go back over to velocities and
check out some of these brighter
pinks and purples and. Yellows
56 mph, so all of these,
at least on the radar,
are coming in below severe criteria,
still gusty still can do damage.
Still can cause power outages,
but right now they are below severe criteria,
so that is the good news here.
And as I mentioned when we
first started this broadcast.
The overall line we're
not seeing strengthening,
which is the good news.
It's kind of plateauing,
and we kind of get a signature of that.
By this this is kind of an
interesting way to do things so we
can sample the lightning in some
of these cells so that cell right
there that has the warning on it,
130 strikes and this is just
in the last 10 minutes or so.
And it hasn't been increasing.
If we were seeing this storm strengthening,
we'd see this number going
up at a pretty steady pace.
Not seeing that what's really driving this
severe weather with this is the gusty winds.
And putting this in motion,
it is traveling at a pretty decent speed.
A two hour loop here shows it
covering a lot of real estate.
In that two hour window.
I believe this cell when it was
warned was moving at 50 to 60 mph
so the cells themselves are cruising
and if you look at it here.
In terms of how,
how fast it's moving in the area that it's
gonna cover in just a short amount of time.
So it's.
Was right there.
There it is to Houston.
About 63 miles from Houston say it's moving
at 50 to 60 miles an hour within an hour,
hour, 15 or so.
It may be in the downtown area and
it's starting to fill on in as
well because you can see some more
showers and storms developing here.
Out into the spring area.
Out ahead of it and what's interesting
was probably driving these new Magnolia,
Tomball, and Cypress.
Is that earlier that line as
it matures and then collapses,
it sends out something called an
outflow boundary and what that's it?
That is is almost like a micro scale.
The cold front.
It digs under the warm
moist air forces it to rise,
and can sometimes lead to development
out ahead of the main line,
and that's likely what we're seeing here.
Some of these flaring on
up with some lightning too,
so they're building quite quickly,
so that's an area to watch as we go
through the next half an hour or so.
Bigger picture again as we wrap things up.
Still ongoing severe thunderstorm warnings.
I don't see any reason why these
would not be extended.
Farther to the east, southeast,
and eventually encompassing portions
of Harris County over into Montgomery.
Right now it's just bordering it out
to Grimes and down South into Katy.
Eventually, in the Fort Bend,
so this is going to be impacting
the entire area.
Also, I should mention that watches are up.
Severe thunderstorm watch for
our entire area until 5:00 AM.
So this is expected to hold
together as it hits the coastline.
Within that time,
let's look at the modeling here because
we're getting hourly updates on these models.
Here's the line initializing recently,
so it's getting a good handle on
what's going on at present time,
and as we go out in time,
the next two hours hour actually
pushes on into our Western zones.
This is actually a little bit behind
schedule from what we just saw on radar.
Going out to 3:30,
it is right down the center of the
I-45 corridor through downtown Houston.
Gusty winds likely still a factor here.
Fast forward another hour and a half.
It's moving towards the coast and
eventually offshore into the Gulf of
Mexico and then gone by 7:00 or 8:00 AM.
So once it moves into our area,
it's not going to be hanging around for long,
and it's another reason why we're not
going to be seeing massive rainfall totals.
Our main priority.
Our main threat is going to
be for damaging wind gusts.
Still.
Right now we're not seeing anything
verify above severe criteria
which will be over 55 to 60 mph,
well under that so far,
so still can cause some damage.
Large hail, as you saw,
is not a factor.
Tornado threat is minimal and the
street flooding risk is probably
could be lowered even more so because
we're only expecting half inch.
Maybe an inch locally higher in some areas,
not enough to cause any major issues.
So that's the latest we'll have.
Another update,
Kim Castro and Pat Kavanagh will
be in in a little while.
If anything changes we will join
you on the digital side or if need
be cut in on the TV side as well.
Until then, stay safe and stay updated.