Unpleasant Houston Marathon Weather Forecast

This post is from 2009.








01-25-11 Edit





Click here for 2011 Houston Marathon weather updates.

























The wraparound Gulf flow came in strong this morning. It's nearly 60ºF here at 8AM. And it appears the weak cold front won't arrive until later Sunday morning. I really don't like the warmer temperatures. It's so frustrating to be faced with this after so many nearly perfect days recently.

The contract weather service for the nuke plant has their short range forecast available on the KUHF site
Tonight: Cloudy with a chance of showers.
Overnight Low: 57
Sunday: Mostly cloudy with a slight chance of showers before noon, then becoming mostly sunny to party cloudy.
High: 71

Marathon Day is on the NWS forecast:
Saturday Night: A 30 percent chance of showers after midnight. Patchy fog after midnight. Otherwise, cloudy, with a low around 56. South wind 5 to 10 mph becoming west.
Sunday: A 30 percent chance of showers before 9am. Cloudy through mid morning, then gradual clearing, with a high near 69. Northwest wind between 10 and 15 mph.

Here's the NWS hourly graphical forecast.
The forecasters discussion says:
THOSE INVOLVED IN THE OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES STARTING AROUND SUNRISE IN THE HOUSTON AREA ON SUNDAY CAN EXPECT CLDY SKIES WITH TEMPS IN THE MID 50S...WITH SOME PATCHY FOG AND SCT SHRA IN THE AREA. ANY RAIN SHOULD BE SOUTH OF THE METRO AREA BY 9 AM. FRONT ITSELF AND CLEARING SKIES WILL FOLLOW FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE MORNING AND AFTERNOON.


The 84 hour model now includes marathon morning. This model hasn't changed much, with temperature in the upper 50s and a warmup but the dry-out is now very late in the race and northwest winds around 10mph [the graph is in UTC, six hours ahead of Houston]. Here's the text version of the models for Hobby Airport.




The Weather Channel tends to weight their predictions with seasonal averages. For Sunday morning they show:
7am 56°F, Mostly Cloudy, feels like 55°F, precip 10%, relative humidity 93%, Wind From NNW 5 mph

Sunrise 7:17 am

8am 57°F, Partly Cloudy, feels like 56°F, precip 10%, relative humidity 90%, Wind From WNW 6 mph

9am 58°F, Partly Cloudy, feels like 57°F, precip 10%, relative humidity 83%, Wind From NW 7 mph

10am 60°F, Partly Cloudy, feels like 59°F, precip 10%, relative humidity 72%, Wind From NW 8 mph

11am 63°F, Sunny, feels like 63°F, precip 0%, relative humidity 60%, Wind From NW 9 mph


AccuWeather is the last holdout with cool temperatures Sunday morning. They predict:
7am 51° F Cloudy
8am 53° F Mostly Cloudy
9am 56° F Rain
10am 59° F Mostly Cloudy
11am 61° F Mostly Cloudy

And their dewpoints are all below 49° F!