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GMZ335 Galveston Bay- 205 Pm Cst Mon Dec 11 2023
Tonight..East winds 5 to 10 knots. Bay waters smooth.
Tuesday..East winds 10 to 15 knots. Bay waters slightly choppy.
Tuesday night..East winds 10 to 15 knots. Bay waters slightly choppy.
Wednesday..East winds 15 to 20 knots, diminishing to around 15 knots early in the afternoon, then becoming northeast 15 to 20 knots late. Bay waters choppy, becoming slightly choppy early in the afternoon, then becoming choppy late.
Wednesday night..Northeast winds 15 to 20 knots. Bay waters choppy.
Thursday..Northeast winds 20 to 25 knots, becoming east around 20 knots in the afternoon. Bay waters rough, becoming choppy in the afternoon.
Thursday night..East winds 15 to 20 knots. Bay waters choppy.
Friday..East winds 15 to 20 knots. Bay waters choppy. A chance of showers.
Friday night..Northeast winds 15 to 20 knots. Bay waters choppy. Showers likely with a chance of Thunderstorms.
Saturday..North winds around 15 knots. Bay waters slightly choppy to choppy. A chance of showers.
Saturday night..North winds around 15 knots. Bay waters slightly choppy to choppy. A chance of showers.
winds and waves higher in and near Thunderstorms.

GMZ300 Synopsis For High Island To The Matagorda Ship Channel Out 60 Nautical Miles Including Galveston And Matagorda Bays 205 Pm Cst Mon Dec 11 2023
Synopsis for high island to the matagorda ship channel out 60 nm including galveston and matagorda bays
light onshore winds are in place across the waters this afternoon as high pressure makes its way across the area. That high will continue to move towards the southeast us, setting us up for a long fetch of moderate east winds by midweek. This will cause building seas and above normal tides through the second half of the week. Small craft advisories are likely due to the higher winds and waves, and a few gusts to around gale are possible Thursday. An upper level storm system and associated cold front is forecast to move into the region Friday and Friday night. Showers and isolated Thunderstorms are expected ahead of the front during the day Friday, followed by some trailing light rain, tapering off through the weekend.

FXUS64 KHGX 112002 AFDHGX

Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Houston/Galveston TX 202 PM CST Mon Dec 11 2023

New SHORT TERM, LONG TERM, MARINE

SHORT TERM
(This evening through Tuesday Night)
Issued at 202 PM CST Mon Dec 11 2023

Tranquil and cool conditions are expected tonight with mostly clear skies over the inland portions and partly cloudy skies near the coasts. The lows overnight into early Tuesday morning will be in the low to mid 30s over the Piney Woods region, the upper 30s to low 40s for areas north of I-10, the low to mid 40s for areas south of I-10, and the upper 40s to low 50s along the coasts.

On Tuesday, benign conditions will prevail. Skies will gradually turn from mostly clear to partly cloudy starting from the west and expanding east during the afternoon as low level moisture begins to move back into the region. Temperatures will be warmer with highs in the mid to upper 60s over areas north of I-10 and the mid 60s to low 70s over areas south of I-10. The lows Tuesday night into early Wednesday morning will be in the upper 30s to mid 40s along the Brazos Valley and Piney Woods region, the upper 40s to low 50s for areas along and south of I-10, and the low to mid 50s along the coasts.

LONG TERM
(Wednesday through next Sunday)
Issued at 202 PM CST Mon Dec 11 2023

And now for the messy part of the forecast - the weather that is, not the forecaster
I mean
I'll grant that it's possible that the forecaster is also a mess, but unlike that one X-Files episode, whether or not that's true is entirely irrelevant to how the weather will turn out. Which, we've established, is messy.

Wednesday morning, like through the short term, we find ourselves on the southwestern fringe of a broad, strong, eastern US high pressure center. Beyond that, however, we start getting changes.
We're continuing to see a weak shortwave stroll over the Gulf. In past days, despite its disorganization, it looked like it would spin up a weak surface trough to follow. That appears to have largely disappeared from the guidance. But no worries! (I don't think you were worried) Instead we look for a surface trough coming in from the east, farther south in the Gulf. This will keep the pressure gradient tight and promote increased cloud cover, compressing the diurnal temperature range (through both cooler days and warmer nights). However, there's higher confidence that rain chances will be restricted to the Gulf waters off Matagorda Bay...for Wednesday, anyway.

Another big piece of this mess is an upper trough closing off over the Southwest US, and though Wednesday morning that looks to be happening near Vegas, it does not stay near Vegas. It will spend the second half of the week traversing Arizona, New Mexico, and finally Texas. How quickly it does that will be key to when rain potential pushes its way into the area from the west. Like most closed lows in this position, that is a fairly uncertain thing at this point. For the time being, I'm rolling with something pretty close to the NBM consensus, which seems reasonable at this point. That would mean some lead shortwave/ejected vorticity looks to drag some PoPs up towards the Matagorda Bay area from the Gulf on Thursday, but mostly leave the rest of the area dry.
Then, around Thursday night, the first rain chances make their way in from the west as the upper low approaches.

Then we get to another big question - how exactly does this upper low cross the state? If it's fairly progressive, we get something pretty typical with low pressure spinning up to our north and heading northeastward as the low gets drawn back into the northern stream and we see a cold front pass through. But an idea that's gaining steam is that a strongly building ridge upstream over the western US deforms the flow, and sends the upper low instead diving through Southeast Texas to the Gulf. In this scenario, we get something that looks like a weird NW flow/surface trough/proto-low hybrid
thing
that brings a solid round of rain and some isolated thunderstorms as it trucks through, eventually forming a more coherent surface low over the NW Gulf that may continue some lingering spurts of wraparound light showers through Saturday and into early Sunday.

Now, this second idea had always kind of existed in the guidance envelope, but I had mostly discounted it as an outlier. But, a couple things have me thinking differently today: the first is that while an outlier, not all outliers are equal. It's not that unusual for numerical guidance to whiff on how far south these types of closed lows tend to dig. So while it may not have been popular in earlier guidance for this scenario to occur, it was still in line with a more common failure mode of the guidance. And second, more models are starting to hop on board with this idea.
Even the Euro, which had been steadfast in the prior scenario, shows this happening now; albeit later and to our east. It's turned enough of the tide that the resultant NBM fields more closely indicate this occurring. Given the broad uncertainty here, again it seems most responsible to follow the lead of the consensus here. Fortunately for me, while a lot of the meteorological differences between models here are nuanced and interesting, the ultimate forecast isn't *that* different - more clouds, small diurnal temperature ranges, and unsettled weather through the late week.

Now, there is one more thing that does concern me a bit. Having the upper low truck straight through our CWA rather than swing a cold front through probably does maximize lift on Friday when that trucking happens. This does tend to concentrate rainfall more, and the QPF forecast reflects that with light rainfall amounts Thursday and on the weekend, focusing the heaviest rains on Friday. This is as high as 2-4 inches for the day where the highest amounts near the coast are. This had me focus a little more on heavy rainfall potential than I did yesterday. And, while concentrating the rainfall more in one day is more worrisome on the flooding potential front, there are still a couple big things going in our favor: because of the fairly mild week, we look to only have minimal instability built up. This should limit convective updrafts, and keep high end rain rates out of the picture. The rates are usually the killer for us! Secondly, ensemble mean precipitable water values in both NAEFS and EPS are not climatologically extreme, below the 90th percentile for both cases. So, while it's still something to keep an eye out for - and indeed, WPC has reasonably introduced a marginal risk for excessive rainfall for the area on Friday - my freakout level is still relatively low. Basically right in line with having a marginal risk.



AVIATION
(18Z TAF Issuance)
Issued at 1109 AM CST Mon Dec 11 2023

VFR conditions with light SE winds today and tonight. Models are hinting at a shallow llvl cloud layer developing late tonight into Tue morning...added FEW010-020 for the time being, but may end up having MVFR cigs for a few hours. Cigs, if any, are expected to scatter out and lift shortly after sunrise. Winds will turn E at 5-10 KTS Tues.

24

MARINE
Issued at 202 PM CST Mon Dec 11 2023

Enjoy the relatively quiescent conditions on the waters while we have them - for now, high pressure moving by sets us up for light onshore flow and low seas. However, that high will set up shop and the pressure gradient will tighten, giving us a persistent and long easterly fetch for the next several days. This will build seas and increase water levels at high tide above expected astronomical tides, which are already relatively high.

By midweek, we should expect the need for some sort of small craft advisory as winds and seas look to be near and sometimes exceed the advisory threshold. Late in the week as the upper level low moves in, conditions should deteriorate further, and offshore seas could reach as high as 10-12 feet. At the shore, we will also be on the lookout for minor coastal flooding depending on how we see a combination of the higher astronomical tides, increased water levels from easterly winds, and wave runup from higher seas.

PRELIMINARY POINT TEMPS/POPS
College Station (CLL) 38 67 45 64 / 0 0 0 0 Houston (IAH) 41 66 46 63 / 0 0 0 0 Galveston (GLS) 53 65 55 63 / 0 0 0 0

HGX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES
TX...None.
GM...None.

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Eagle Point
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Mon -- 01:05 AM CST     0.84 feet Low Tide
Mon -- 03:26 AM CST     0.85 feet High Tide
Mon -- 05:46 AM CST     Moonrise
Mon -- 07:04 AM CST     Sunrise
Mon -- 12:39 PM CST     -0.28 feet Low Tide
Mon -- 04:11 PM CST     Moonset
Mon -- 05:21 PM CST     Sunset
Mon -- 08:55 PM CST     1.03 feet High Tide
Tide / Current data from XTide NOT FOR NAVIGATION

Eagle Point, Texas, Tide feet

Bolivar Roads
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Mon -- 05:45 AM CST     Moonrise
Mon -- 07:03 AM CST     Sunrise
Mon -- 07:08 AM CST     -2.34 knots Max Ebb
Mon -- 11:45 AM CST     0.00 knots Slack
Mon -- 03:32 PM CST     2.59 knots Max Flood
Mon -- 04:11 PM CST     Moonset
Mon -- 05:21 PM CST     Sunset
Mon -- 10:07 PM CST     -0.00 knots Slack
Tide / Current data from XTide NOT FOR NAVIGATION

Bolivar Roads, Texas Current, knots

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