Attention then quickly turns to the tropics for Thursday through
the weekend. The remnants of Harvey are expected to rapidly
develop into a tropical system over the western Gulf of Mexico
during this time. All of the global guidance is in fair agreement
with the track of this system inland somewhere from the Coastal
Bend into the middle Texas coast late Friday. This is a shift
northward from yesterday`s solutions but seems very plausible
given the strengthening subtropical ridge over the southwestern
U.S. and persistent troughing over the eastern U.S. We`re still a
little far out for specifics on the strength of the system, but it
does appear that at least parts of North and Central Texas could
be impacted by this system by Friday into the weekend. Based on
the latest forecast tracks by the global guidance and with support
from many of the ensemble members of the GFS/ECMWF and Canadian,
copious amounts of rainfall could fall from Central Texas into
southeast Texas through the weekend. Right now, it looks like most
of our area would be on the northern and northwestern periphery
of the storm, which is typically a more subsident and drier side.
It`s too early for details, but we`ll have generally high PoPs
from Friday night through Sunday across our far southern and
southeastern counties. We`ve capped PoPs at 60% for this forecast
cycle based on timing/track uncertainties, but it should be noted
that if a full blown tropical cyclone develops, very tight
gradients in PoPs/rainfall amounts are common especially on the
north/northwest sides of the systems. So, this will need to be
closely monitored over the next 48-72 hours and the forecast will
likely change many times.
How many of these models are taking into consideration the cold front (and a pretty strong one at that) that will be pushing south across TX over the next 36 hours. This should pull the system northward before pushing it off to the E/NE. I say this will probably be a central TX coastal landfall.
