textproduct: Houston/Galveston

KEY MESSAGES

- Near-critical fire weather conditions may emerge Saturday afternoon as gusty north winds bring in a new surge of dry air behind the cold front.

- Negative tide levels are are expected through at least the weekend, being reinforced after Friday's cold front.

- Though brief and not causing impacts, there is a chance for a short, isolated instances of sleet and/or flurries on Saturday night. This will be followed later in the night by a light freeze from the northern and west fringes of the Houston metro northward.

- Our next good chance for rainfall will come towards the middle of next week as a coastal trough forms in the remnants of a cold front that will pass through our area late Monday.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 1243 AM CST Fri Jan 16 2026

While a good word to describe the weather so far this week is "seasonable", one aspect of winter and the increased influence of the northern jet stream in the region also means another good word is "unstable". We've been bouncing almost daily between conditions that are a little on the cool side of average to conditions on the warm side of average with frequent dry cold fronts passing through. Through early next week, basically nothing changes in that at all.

Friday will be our turn on the warm side, and with highs on the coastal plain from the Houston metro southwestward edging into the middle 70s, it will be among the warmer of the warm trips during the past week. Things do look a bit cooler well inland, as our next front looks to push in from the north in the early afternoon, and will likely chop down temps for places like College Station and Crockett before the natural high. The front should spend the rest of the afternoon pushing towards the Gulf coast, and out over the coastal waters in the evening.

Gusty north to northeast winds will pick up overnight Friday into Saturday in the front's wake, bring in a new slug of colder, drier air. As vegetation continues to dry after multiple dry fronts, a more serious fire weather situation may begin to emerge on Saturday with the gusty and dry conditions, with more details on that in the fire weather section below. Beyond that, we'll be looking for a colder, gusty day on land, and degrading conditions on the waters with strong winds and building seas (more on that in the marine section below).

Saturday night is starting to look...let's call it...interesting. while the low level airmass scours out moisture from the bottom up, the big mid-level trough digs deep into Texas. And yes, since we seem to manage this occasionally, this puts us in a spot where we're watching the race between plummeting moisture against forcing for light precip, and if we get some precip to develop in time, it will fall into a chilly, dry airmass that will first evaporate all the snow/rainfall...but as that evaporation cools the column further, eventually gives us a chance for a brief five-minute flurry fiesta or burst of light sleet before everything shuts off completely. Given we had this situation occur with an earlier front that I was sure would dry out too early, I feel more confident that with moisture lingering a bit longer and good mesoscale forcing along a low level frontogenetic band, that we get this to occur again Saturday night. Now...impacts will be nil...and unless you're out looking for it Saturday night and are in a spot where some frozen stuff survives to the ground, you won't even notice it. But I've got to think we pull off the briefest bit of sleet/flurries somewhere in the area at some point. That's still not enough to make me put in any PoPs or mention in the gridded forecast, as that is based on accumulating precip.

And while a few pellets of sleet and/or flash of flakes may steal the scene, the bigger issue Saturday night will be the freeze potential. Both NAEFS and EPS bring 850 temps below the 3rd percentile Saturday night, with the eastern half of the area below even the 1st percentile. Correspondingly, the EPS Extreme Forecast Index gets into the -0.6 to -0.7 range for extreme cold anomalies Saturday night. This is a fairly strong signal to me that we've got quite the chilly night ahead of us - perhaps not record or extremely dangerous, but with a real risk of a light freeze creeping into the northern and western fringes of the Houston metro, and perhaps even a brief hard freeze up in our far north around Houston County.

To kind of sketch out the fuzzy part of where the freeze line may land early Sunday morning, let's look at some NBM probabilities of freezing temps. Places like The Woodlands, Cypress, Katy, and even out to Eagle Lake are in the 66-75 percent range. Strong probabilities of a light freeze into the edges of the Houston metro, and even a bit south of I-10 in the more rural west. Even down into the area far to the southwest of the metro see NBM probs below 32 in the 50-60 percent range, for locations like Wharton, Bay City, and Angleton. As you get closer to the coast and into the urban core of Houston, though, probabilities drop pretty rapidly. Matagorda and Downtown Houston? Only right around 25 percent. Pearland and League City on the south side gets up to 31 percent thanks to being a little more suburban, while Texas City and Galveston are less than 5 percent. We can also see the lower, but existent threat of a hard freeze, as only locations in Madison and Houston counties even approach the coin flip of 50 percent. Still, if you're critically vulnerable to a hard freeze up there, it may be worth taking the preparations, just to be safe.

Look for onshore flow to return at some point on Sunday, but this is largely just a continuation of the same old pattern, as it will be quickly erased by a weak, likely dry front on Monday. And then, that's where things start to change. Rather than keeping the whole wave train chugging along, switching back to onshore flow ahead of the next front, things finally start to get gummed up. A coastal trough/warm front starts to form up in the remnants of Monday's front, and will lift back towards Southeast Texas. By midweek, this will boost humidity and ultimately bring in some solid rain potential to at least the coast, and potentially to all of Southeast Texas depending on how far north this marine airmass lifts. I'm not terribly concerned about heavy rain at this point, as precipitable water values increase above average but fall short of the 90th percentile in the ensemble guidance. While this can certainly change and we'll be watching, for now I invite all area Dads to join me at the window mid-week, take a nice sip of warm beverage from a mug and say, "We really needed this".

AVIATION

(00Z TAF Issuance) Issued at 510 PM CST Thu Jan 15 2026

Winds become light overnight. We expect a general S to SSW flow, though many areas could become variable. Tomorrow, expect winds to increase from the SW ahead of an approaching frontal boundary. We think winds will generally be 10-15 knots with occasionally higher gusts. Late in the day into the evening, a cold front will shift winds to a more northerly direction.

VFR vis/cigs expected through the TAF period.

MARINE

Issued at 1243 AM CST Fri Jan 16 2026

Light to moderate winds out of the south to southwest have become established over the waters. Wind speeds are generally below the threshold for caution flags, though a handful of gusts peak into the upper teens here and there. One marine hazard that has not improved, though, are the abnormally low tide levels on Galveston and Matagorda bays. Despite winds turning onshore, they are light winds and astronomical tide levels alone are already very near the advisory threshold. Because of this, any tidal levels below those astronomical levels will make low water advisories necessary, and the current onshore flow will not be enough to rebound from the low water levels we have been seeing. The return of onshore winds after a cold front passes Friday night will just make conditions worse again. The low water advisory has thus been extended through the weekend, and may need to be dragged out even further depend on how tidal levels rebound before Monday's cold front.

Small Craft Advisories will likely be needed again on Saturday through early Sunday for strong northeast winds after the earlier front. There is low chance for light rain showers on Saturday as well. A stray pellet of sleet or a snowflake can't be completely ruled out in the Galveston Bay area Saturday night before precip chances go to zero, though potential for accumulation is nil and there would be no impacts. Onshore winds return Sunday night as the unsettled weather pattern continues, as it is merely a leadup to the next cold front late Monday.

FIRE WEATHER

Issued at 1243 AM CST Fri Jan 16 2026

With the passage of recent dry cold fronts, fire weather conditions have been mitigated by fuel moisture near or above average levels, counteracting the dry and breezy post-frontal conditions. However, with each dry front, fuels grow drier from the lack of rainfall and return of meaningful, sustained humidity.

More serious fire weather conditions may emerge after Friday's cold front, as relative humidity below 30 percent, and even below 20 percent in the driest spots will coincide with gusty north/northeast winds on Saturday afternoon. In addition, Texas A&M fuel moisture data indicates a drier fuelscape, driven by what appears to be 100 hour fuel moistures reaching an inflection point of dryness after several days without rain. Taken together, elevated fire weather conditions for much of the area are very likely, with the potential for near-critical to critical conditions. The best potential for critical fire weather conditions look to be in the Matagorda Bay area northward, where the driest, windiest conditions are expected, along with fuel beds that tend to be fine, grassy fuels and more responsive to drops in relative humidity. A major mitigating factor in this situation is that the post-frontal airmass is also colder, with Saturday highs in the area only reaching into the lower to middle 50s.

Beyond Saturday, we'll need to continue to monitor conditions into early next week, as moisture return will again be weak, keeping conditions dry through another front passing through Monday. Moderation will come towards the middle of the week, with the return of more humid air and meaningful rain chances.

PRELIMINARY POINT TEMPS/POPS

College Station (CLL) 43 70 38 52 / 0 0 0 0 Houston (IAH) 45 74 45 54 / 0 0 0 0 Galveston (GLS) 52 69 51 57 / 0 0 20 10

HGX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

TX...None. GM...Low Water Advisory until 6 PM CST Sunday for GMZ330-335.