Plaincast
What the forecast actually says — NWS Area Forecast Discussions, decoded into plain English.
Plaincast decodes the National Weather Service's Area Forecast Discussion — the real forecast, written 3 to 4 times a day by the meteorologist on shift — into plain English. The discussion is where a forecaster explains their reasoning: which models disagree, what they are watching, and how confident they are. Below is the current edition for Houston, with its shorthand expanded. The full experience — an AI plain-English summary beside the annotated original — loads with JavaScript, and every one of the 68 forecast offices has its own edition.
Locally stronger coastal/offshore thunderstorms capable of heavy rain and strong winds possible this morning until early afternoon.
Scattered, diurnally driven showers and thunderstorms will remain in the forecast for the next several days.
High temperatures will generally be in the low to mid 90s inland and the upper 80s to lower 90s along the coast.
Mid-upper trough from the Great Lakes to the OK/AR region should continue tracking eastward the next few days. Further south into our area, there remains a lingering trough/weakness/shear axis stretched across East Texas into the NW Gulf that will remain in the neighborhood a bit longer through the weekend.
Like the past several days, we're anticipating some scattered shower/thunderstorms activity to develop offshore and near the coast before sunrise. Some of the 00z guidance suggests that a few of the embedded coastal cells could pack a punch between about 4am-1pm with 30-45mph wind gusts and heavy rain being the primary issue. In terms of heavy rain, wouldn't be surprised to see a few quick couple of inches of rain in a short time period near some of our coastal counties - albeit it should be quite localized and wherever any strongest activity materializes. This precipitation should eventually expand inland as the day progresses and we get more daytime heating. Guidance has generally underestimated the northward extent of precipitation movement the past several days, though the shear axis should be positioned a bit further southeast today and this weekend. which may end up limiting chance of rain across the Brazos Valley and Piney Woods. That said, feel better mentioning at least some low chances considering recent model performance and uncertainty. For the southern half of the area - more of the same wx through the weekend.
One thing folks might want to consider this weekend with outdoor plans (football games, etc) will be some warmer temperatures and peak afternoon heat index readings in the 105-108F range.
Early next week, strengthening mid-upper ridge across the SE U.S. will expand westward back into Texas and force the current lingering weakness out of the area. With less cloudiness and lower (but non- zero) rain chances, look for temperatures to warm back up closer to the mid 90s for daytime highs and lows 74-80 into midweek. Then Thurs-Fri, another inverted trough tracks westward under the ridge and toward the western Gulf coast and possibly brings some higher rain chances back to the southern part of the area. 47
This is the plain-text edition, decoded without AI so it loads anywhere. Read the whole Houston discussion at /o/HGX/, see what changed since the last one, or open The National Desk for where the weather is today.
Data from the National Weather Service. Translated by Claude. About · For developers & agents · Subscribe: RSS feed for this office · Source on GitHub