textproduct: Houston/Galveston

KEY MESSAGES

- Mariners navigating in the shallows of upper Galveston Bay will need to continue to exercise caution through low tide cycles where negative tide levels are anticipated.

- Temperatures continue to warm Friday and into next week. Today, look for highs across the area to rise into the 70s almost area- wide, only slightly cooler at the coast. This warming trend should continue through the first half of the new week.

- The one pause to this trend looks to be Tuesday, as we see a day of increased cloudiness, along with a chance for rain and some storms to pass through. This will exit Tuesday night, however, putting us back on the warming trend.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 1156 PM CST Thu Feb 5 2026

A cool start to Thursday set us up for a seasonable day despite plenty of sun - a bit warmer than Wednesday, though not much. However, overnight temperatures into Friday morning should give us a good 10 degree head start to temperatures over Thursday, which means a similar day should put most all of the area easily into the 70s Friday afternoon. The one exception will be right on the immediate coast, where colder water temps should manage to keep those beach temps just on the low side of 70 degrees.

Much of the rest of the forecast period is gauging how strong ridging will be throughout the column, and the potential for warming. The qualitative trend of the deterministic NBM seems to hold pretty well, with warming continuing pretty much through the whole forecast period, barring a bit of a pause on Tuesday; we'll get to that shortly. Like last night, I did tend to hedge against the deterministic NBM numbers by replacing it with the median of the NBM probabilistic distribution where that number was higher. With onshore flow becoming persistent, that move generally bumped up lows near the coast, which strikes me as a good move. It also nudges afternoon highs up modestly.

This also seems like the way to go for now - while ensemble mid- level heights and 850 temps are definitely skewing towards the high end of their climatology, it is still not a slam dunk indication of real extreme warm event. The EPS Extreme Forecast Index/EFI also continues to waggle its eyebrows about high-end heat for late winter, but don't really venture into the "yes, look out for big warmth" territory. This is in both the EFI itself, and in not seeing much in the accompanying shift- of-tails values. Where the EFI itself helps gauge confidence in modeled extremes, the shift-of-tails tries to give some indication of just how extreme the extreme may be. Long story short (too late!), all of this ensemble data tells me that while I should be confident to go well above seasonal averages with my temperatures, I probably don't want to go playing in record territory just yet. It doesn't take much of an upwards hedge on NBM to hit that mark.

Finally, let's step back to Tuesday. NBM finally seems to have caught on to the potential for some thunderstorms to go with the rain showers as this upper trough shoots through in the southern stream. This'll give us a one day break from stacked ridging, more clouds, a pause on the warming trend for a day, and *fingers crossed!* enough coverage in showers and storms to give us a little more help on the drought front. I don't anticipate it will be much on the broad scale, but every little bit helps!

Now, I had mentioned some deterministic model stuff last night as a potential worst case scenario, because the Euro setup had caught my eye for not just storms, but maybe even something strong to severe. Tonight, we have a good example of why we can note things in deterministic models, we don't want to get too attached to them (especially at range). Those deterministic models aren't quite so concerning this go 'round. Still rain, still some thunderstorms, but nothing that makes me stop and go "uh oh". (Another good example, something something Valentine's Day Blizzard or something like that? I was off that day, what happened to that thing?). That said, I don't want to completely dismiss the idea of something stronger on Tuesday. We still have a fairly potent trough pushing through, an upper jet streak, and an influx of moisture at low levels. If all those ingredients line up just right/wrong, stronger storms could be back on the table. But the fact that such a scenario only flits into the model picture here and there is a good indicator to me that it's something to consider as a low probability/worst case scenario, while the more likely outcome is less intense and more beneficial to the area's rainfall deficits.

AVIATION

(12Z TAF Issuance) Issued at 520 AM CST Fri Feb 6 2026

VWP's from IAH, HOU & HGX radars indicate some westerly winds 30-35kt between 1-2kft. With fairly light surface winds early this morning, we've extended the mention of low level wind shear for the next 3 hours or so until we get some mixing. Otherwise, VFR conditions with west winds 5-10kt well inland, 9-18kt metro to the coast. Speeds diminish as the afternoon progresses. 47

MARINE

Issued at 1156 PM CST Thu Feb 5 2026

Winds tonight through Friday afternoon will be elevated enough, 15 to 20 knots, that caution flags are up on Gulf waters into Saturday. Otherwise, generally light winds and low seas will prevail into early next week. Winds will begin southwesterly to westerly, then briefly become offshore on Saturday before finally veering to become easterly to southeasterly Saturday night through early next week. The next chance for showers and thunderstorms will not be come until Tuesday or Tuesday night.

On the bays, negative tide levels can be expected to continue. The most severe conditions can continue to be expected on upper portions of Galveston Bay through the weekend. However, there may be times when water levels are not so low as to require a low water advisory.

PRELIMINARY POINT TEMPS/POPS

College Station (CLL) 80 47 76 48 / 0 0 0 0 Houston (IAH) 79 51 74 49 / 0 0 0 0 Galveston (GLS) 69 54 62 55 / 0 0 0 0

HGX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

TX...None. GM...Small Craft Should Exercise Caution until 3 PM CST this afternoon for GMZ350-355.

Small Craft Should Exercise Caution through this afternoon for GMZ370-375.