textproduct: Houston/Galveston

KEY MESSAGES

- While fog this afternoon has retreated to a narrow corridor over portions of Galveston Bay and adjacent Gulf waters, that fog should expand back across the bay area tonight. Dense fog will be focused on the waters, but may also bleed into coastal Southeast Texas as well.

- Scattered to widespread showers and thunderstorms are expected on Saturday. Isolated strong to severe thunderstorms are possible in the afternoon and evening. Damaging winds and small hail are the main hazards, while a brief tornado or two cannot be ruled out.

- After a weak cold front passes, conditions will turn drier and warm Sunday and deep into next week.

DISCUSSION

Issued at 437 PM CST Fri Feb 13 2026

Fog has bedeviled Southeast Texas today, particularly a narrow corridor on the lowest portion of Galveston Bay and adjacent Gulf waters, where enough patches of dense fog has continued a dense fog advisory even through this afternoon. Elsewhere around the area, though, fog has given way to a partly to mostly cloudy sky with warm conditions as temperatures rose into the upper 70s to around 80 degrees.

Of course, when sea fog is not erased even in the afternoon, it should be no surprise to expect that to become a major issue again once the sun goes down, and we are not an exception here. All expectations are for fog to surge back this evening, focused around the Galveston Bay area. The most dense fog should be over the waters, but we should see bleedover over coastal land areas as well. There is less confidence in how dense fog over the land will be, however, so for now the advisory is only place for the waters, which also have a lower threshold to meet for dense fog. Any dense fog should (strong emphasis on "should") be disrupted sooner, as increasing winds ahead of an incoming cold front will make it harder for dense fog to stay in place.

Farther down the coast, I'd expect the return of some fog as well, though like with conditions over land, there is not as much confidence in dense fog even over the waters down towards Matagorda Bay. With winds looking to be just a bit stronger, this may be enough to keep visibility above even the 1 NM threshold for a marine dense fog advisory, making the 1/4 mile threshold over land a bigger stretch.

While fog is the immediate weather concern in the area, it is not the only one...nor is it even the only one in the short term forecast. With that front I mentioned up top moving on in for Saturday, attention quickly turns from fog to rain and thunderstorm potential.

For the most part, given long-term dryness and rainfall deficits, any rain from Friday night through Saturday night will be much appreciated. Particularly anything late Friday into Saturday morning, which will lean heavily towards light to moderate showers on isentropic upglide from the onshore flow. We do start to look at a mixed blessing the deeper we go into Saturday, however. As the front moves in, along with better synoptic support and forcing, we'll see a blossoming of convection culminating in a line of thunderstorms sweeping through Southeast Texas tomorrow evening and overnight.

Even with this frontal line of storms, I'd expect this to mostly be a good outcome - yes, some dangerous lightning, yes some gusty winds, but we can always use the rain right now. However, this may not be an unalloyed good, and confidence seems to be growing that the higher-end storms in this line will indeed have some threat for less-welcomed hazards. However, this remains a somewhat conditional threat. If we get socked in with clouds and rain for much of the day Saturday, that will sap the instability available for the main line of storms, blunting their strength. That said, we still have a rich, Gulf airmass in place, and guidance continues to indicate potential for some severe and heavy rain threat, though not an overwhelming potential.

The beginning of these storms will be to our west, where peak heating will develop MLCAPE values in excess of 1000 J/Kg (HREF ensemble mean). As it moves into our area, that number should wane some, but 500-1000 J/Kg in the HREF mean should still be sufficient to support organized convection, especially given the 50+ knots of effective shear in the HREF mean as well. And should we have less shower activity during the day, this could be even more pronounced - HREF max MLCAPE values stay 1000+ J/Kg through Southeast Texas late into the night, easily sufficient to push a mature QLCS through the area with potential for severe weather. Given all that, it's probably no surprise that a portion of the area has seen themselves added to a slight risk area in SPC's latest Day 2 Outlook. Given the structure as it moves through, damaging straight-line wind gusts are the primary threat, though some small hail might manage to form up in the strongest portions of the line. A brief, isolated tornado or two certainly is a plausible secondary threat. The progged shear vectors aren't super perpendicular to the expected line, but given how strong the shear will be, there's certainly enough of a component normal to the line that we'll have to be on guard for a quick spinner when all the holes in the swiss cheese line up. Mean HREF 0-3 km SRH associated with this line is at/above 300 m2/s2, and exceeding 400 m2/s2 around Lake Livingston and the Piney Woods tomorrow evening. Even stepping down to the 10th percentile, and we can be quite confident in seeing those 0-3 km SRH values in excess of 200 m2/s2.

All in all...for most of us, even this line of storms won't be anything more than a nice bit of rain. But unlike earlier shower potential, it will come with a low, but real, threat of severe weather. Additionally, while a flooding threat will be largely mitigated by the quick motion of the line, that threat also will not be zero. Even in drought, a lot of rain in too short a time can cause problems in vulnerable spots, and the rainiest portions will be capable of dropping enough rain to cause localized issues such as ponding/minor street flooding.

The line should be making its way out of our area shortly after midnight, and outside of some lingering light showers through sunrise, the forecast transitions to one of fair weather, but also one that is unseasonably warm. Yup, mid-February, and we're already looking at cold fronts becoming increasingly ineffective at cooling things down. In general, the strategy here was again a blend of the deterministic NBM and the median of the NBM's probabilistic distribution (whichever was warmer). This largely did a good job of indicating a warmer trend with noticeably above average afternoon highs. These highs look to be getting up into the lower to middle 80s by the middle of next week.

AVIATION

(00Z TAF Issuance) Issued at 514 PM CST Fri Feb 13 2026

LIFR FLs are already ongoing at KGLS with further deterioration anticipated as the sun sets this evening, allowing see fog to roll back over the island tonight. IFR-LIFR CIGs are anticipated to fill inland tonight to all remaining TAF sites. Visibility reductions are also expected, though CIGs should remain the main driver of FL changes outside of the immediate coastal areas, where VLIFR is more likely to occur from instances of quarter mile visibility from sea fog. Strengthening low-level winds and resulting turbulent mixing could lead to some modest CIGs/VIS improvements during the pre-dawn hours of Saturday. Light showers will also begin to develop from west to east during the daytime ahead of an approaching cold front. This cold front should push through SE Texas Saturday night, bringing a line of strong thunderstorms as it passed. A few of these storms could become strong to severe.

03

MARINE

Issued at 437 PM CST Fri Feb 13 2026

Despite gradual improvement for most of the waters, a corridor of dense fog near Galveston Island and the Bolivar peninsula persists on portions of the lower Galveston Bay and nearshore Gulf. It does appear that as of 4 pm, we may have already seen our best conditions of the day. This evening, dense fog will roll back across the waters, focused on the Galveston Bay area. Farther down the coast, sea fog should still be expected to return down towards Matagorda Bay as well, but confidence in dense fog is lower there.

Winds and seas will be on an upward trend today in advance of the next front, and a small craft advisory may be needed at some point Saturday into Sunday. The front itself is expected to pass across the waters Saturday night. Areas of showers and thunderstorms are expected ahead of and along the front. Winds will turn westerly in its wake, then veer through northerly and easterly Sunday and early Monday. Onshore flow should return by late Monday.

PRELIMINARY POINT TEMPS/POPS

College Station (CLL) 63 75 56 69 / 10 90 80 0 Houston (IAH) 63 75 60 73 / 20 80 90 0 Galveston (GLS) 61 69 60 69 / 20 50 80 0

HGX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

TX...None. GM...Dense Fog Advisory until 6 AM CST Saturday for GMZ335-355.