Hurricane-to-be Nate may produce wet weekend here

Every inch that falls means new rainfall record

A wet weekend may be on the horizon for Houston as Tropical Storm Nate nears the Louisiana-Mississippi border, propelling the Bayou City even further beyond its 100-year annual rain record.

The brunt of Nate — which is expected to drop up to 10 inches of rain — is targeting Morgan City, La., through southern Mississippi, with an anticipated landfall late Saturday or early Sunday as a hurricane, National Weather Service meteorologist Melissa Huffman said.

Tropical Storm Nate was headed north near the Mexican coastal resort of Cancun at the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula on Friday.

The storm could bring about a quarter inch of rain to the Bayou City over the weekend, Huffman said.

Houston on Tuesday reached a record for annual rainfall of 74.18 inches, surpassing the previous record of 72.9 inches set in 1900 when an unnamed hurricane wreaked havoc on Galveston.

Hurricane Harvey dropped 70 percent of Harris County’s annual rainfall across the area in just four days, said Jeff Lindner, meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District.

Even prior to the hurricane, though, 2017 rainfall in Houston already was about 10 inches above the annual average, Huffman said.

“We’ve just had sporadic 3- to 4-inch rain

events throughout the spring and summer,” Huffman said.

Upward of 6 inches of rain fell on Aug. 7 and Aug. 8 near George Bush Intercontinental Airport, the official Houston-area rain measuring site since 1969.

In an apparent paradox, the record rainfall comes as 2017 ties with 2011 for the warmest year on record in Houston, according to the NWS.

The average temperature through Oct. 3 was 74.9 degrees.

Typically, cloud cover associated with storms helps cool down Houston, Lindner said. In 2011, a massive heat wave caused Houston to have temperatures exceeding 100 degrees for 30 of the 31 days in August.

This summer lacked a dramatic heat wave. Instead, unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico helped keep overnight temperatures toasty, upping the city’s average temperature, he said.

That same warm water in the Gulf also adds fuel to tropical storms, contributing to Harvey’s devastation, Lindner added.

“The start of all of that probably goes back to our very warm winter where the Gulf didn’t cool down as much as it does,” he said.