Goodbye heat, hello rain | Forecasting With Friends

A little change over time. Is fine. Hi Hello. The weather was not fine on your drive in. As I understand it. Let me tell you, it was an awful drive in when it hasn't rained for a couple weeks in Houston. They people forget how to drive. They just. You either get the two aggressive driver who thinks it's not raining and or you get the so conservative driver and you're just like, look, I know it's raining, but but you're going to have to go and turn off your flashers, okay? I don't need it's not flasher rain. Okay. One of those is going to be my poor daughter who got caught in a downpour back when it was June or, you know, July and just in a panic, had to pull over to an H-e-b parking lot because she'd never been in that kind of downpour before. And I get that. And that's a good move, right? Yeah. Put yourself in the parking lot. Don't stay on the Gulf Freeway. You don't want to be trying to come in and then here's and this is always stressful for me. Like, you know, I'm coming down I-69 getting close to the station, right. And it's pouring. And I'm already thinking through that. I'm going to have to roll the window down. I'm going to have to put got to do that. Yes. With the key card to get the gate to open. And like, am I going to try to put my rain jacket over me? And then sometimes it doesn't scan the first time, you know, or do I just roll it down a little bit and try to pull, you know, what am I going to do here to sort of avoid this thing? But fortunately it's not just me. Oh gosh. No, no, no. So fortunately, just a little bit more of a sprinkle when I had to get to the gate. And but I didn't have time to do the small talk, you know, like, I like to, I like to do. I like to check in. Not on a day like today. But yeah, I had to just kind of, move on through. Well, this is. Yeah, we had some whoppers going on out there here over the last couple of hours, let's take a look at the radar. Yeah, totally. We got to check in. Shall we? Do that? So, radar and temperatures right now, it's amazing the difference compared to the last few weeks where we had already. You know, this time of the day, we'd be up in the 90s already, and instead, we're 75 degrees in Houston with a downpour over the area right now. And we've had several rounds of rain along the coast to where it's still stuck in the 70s. So a lot of spots have kind of been bouncing around the 70s to low 80s so far today. Really heavy thunderstorm there over needville and that one's moving toward, you know, what's out there. Hungerford, Texas I've never been there before. I'm trying to think if I've been to Hungerford, I don't know that I have. Well they're getting rain right now, and then also it's moving into Galveston Bay. We've got some rainy weather, southern Brazoria County, and we have rain of course, in Houston. Here's a look at one of the thunderstorms. It's at. Texas City has been one of the sort of commonly hit spots so far this morning, as several rounds of rain. And then here's a look at the round of rain. That's just moved by Hobby Airport and made its way toward downtown Houston. That's the one that escorted me all the way into work, right? All the way right up the Gulf Freeway and then over to 59, 69. And yeah, that was the one. Why does it always do that? Yeah, it does. Right there. So yeah, this is what it looks like from our tower cam downtown looking off toward the east. I can't believe the 75 degrees at at 11:00 in the morning. That is it's just incredible. We just have not seen a lot of that lately at all, and we have this to thank for this swirl, this upper level area of low pressure, also something we haven't seen for quite a long time around here. No more heat dome for us. Would you would you characterize the rain that we're seeing today as tropical downpours? Because I and I say that because this isn't a tropical system, this upper it's an upper level low. So it's not a tropical but yet it's because of the Gulf of Mexico. Right. That I would say yes you would. You're okay with that? I'm fine with that. With tropical downpours, I did refer this morning to a plume, a tropical plume, yeah. Didn't somebody one day use the term slug? Remember that? A slug of. Oh, yes, I do a slug of moisture that somebody said that a while ago and we said, God, we've never used the term slug of moisture before. That's a forecast discussion from the National Weather Service. Probably. Right? Yeah, probably was one of those things. Like a slug. Yeah Like, you know, we kind of had to look it up a little bit. And so anyway, we decided that I guess it's a thing. So yeah, this is what's going to be with us here for a while everybody. So it's going to stay pretty. You know kind of off and on kind of rainy. This was the forecast rain from the Weather Prediction Center the WPC. And you know it's showing, you know, sort of a broad area of like 3 or 4in of rain. And this is through Sunday. So we're we're several days probably even underdoing it a little bit. I mean, you know, any individual cell obviously is going to drop a lot. So you know off and on rain not as hot. That's about what we're looking at for the day today. So but you know there have also been, you know, I need to, to send a text to my friend. You remember Patrick Blood with the National Weather Service? Sure So my friend Patrick, he was at the local national weather Service office, and then he he made quite the move up in the weather service going to Honolulu, talking about forecasting with friends. That's what we need to do is get him on the phone. He's in Honolulu, in Honolulu. But he didn't go from Houston to Honolulu, did he? He? Yeah. Oh wow, I missed that. So but they they just got hit with, sort of the outer rain bands of. Is it, hon. Yeah hon. See, because I looked at the pronunciation guide. It's a hurricane. It looks like hon. But then it was like, I didn't know if it was hon, hon, hon, I think it is probably a little hon, but I didn't want to say it the wrong way. Hon Hon. Hon. Hon. It's a little bit of that, I think, too, as well. But, I'll tell you, the big island of Hawaii is where most of that, where the worst of what happened took place. Lots of flooding there, dangerous winds and, you know, fox weather. Robert Ray is not going to be there. He's not going to turn down, an opportunity to check out on a on a hurricane. So did not make a landfall. But Robert Ray was there in Hawaii, hon. Once a tropical storm, then turning into a hurricane overnight. And take a look at this. If you can. Lloyd Alford behind the camera. The light came up here about 6 a.m. on the Big Island here in Hilo, about 40,000 people. And you see the Pacific Ocean being churned up. There's a jetty in the distance that's stopping some of the large waves as Lloyd turns the camera just to take a look at some of the atmosphere here, we're at a hotel that has a generator, and you see in the distance some of the palm trees. Well, here's the thing. Overnight it's been very difficult conditions here as the storm passed just to the south of the Big Island, pretty close, 45 to 50 miles on the southern tip of the Big Island. And it's trekking to the west. Every single Hawaiian island will have impacts. And overnight we had heavy precipitation and gusty winds in some areas to the south, where meteorologists and field producer Jared Maloney has been tracking the storm up to 14in or more here in Hilo, we're approaching six inches and that will continue throughout the day. We'll get more throughout the day as these outer bands continue to come in. The problem is too, is road closures and mudslides down on the southern edge, where the Hawaiian Belt Line is just south of the black sand beaches. Road closures blocked off because of the flooding. We're not 100% sure as to whether there's mudslides down there. We got to get our eyeballs trained on that. So we are going to go head down there and take a look for ourselves. But if that's the case, those hilly, sides with the rain and the winds pulling up the mud and breaking down trees and compromising those roadways, we could see flash flooding in towns like Hilo again, 40,000 people here could potentially see that power outages continue to fluctuate in the thousands all morning. And they will likely do that throughout the day, as Hilo is bracing here for more precipitation, the beaches and the parks are closed. Officials have done that to keep people out of the water. They do not want people, surfers out there and those rip currents, and they want to keep people safe. The governor of Hawaii has an emergency declaration in place to help bring in resources. If need be, for some of these communities that may be cut off from the road closures. So potentially the National Guard will be in play. And there are also shelters set up all up and down this eastern coast and in the southern area. Red cross always here to help. That is certain. So Hawaiians are hunkering down every single island will feel the impacts as the storm continues to trek west. And to think there's a trio of storms. We have this system and then we have hurricane Gilma and then we have an invest in the Eastern Pacific. Hawaii really just taking it on the chin here on this Sunday. Normally it's Paradise, not so much today. Back to you. I didn't know they hunkered down in Hawaii. Apparently they did hunker in Hawaii. They hunkered there too. I want to point out that that was from a report from last night, from Robert Ray. So it's a little dated. He mentioned that area of invest that has become a tropical storm. That's Hector, that he was referring to. And at this point, I'm not sure it doesn't it's not real confident that those other two storms are going to hit Hawaii, Gilma is kind of close. Yeah. Gilma is going to weaken because of the cold weather and some upper level winds. But, you know, it's still active very active in the Pacific, very active in the Pacific, and not so much in the Atlantic. It's just, and we'll, you know, give you a look at that a little later in the show. But gosh, it just it seems like it's just out there just cooking, you know, and you know what I mean. It's preheating. Yeah. Like preheating the oven and so come September, you know, there's, there's got to be some day of reckoning. I just hope it doesn't involve us. So today, so seven years ago, hurricane Harvey is a strengthened to a category four and, made landfall very late at night on the 25th into the 26th right now. So kind of today's sort of a nighttime landfall. It was a night which seems like it almost always is. And remember the landfall of Harvey was down near Corpus Christi. We Houston got a lot of the press of Harvey, but it didn't make a landfall here. Yeah, we didn't get the super duper high winds, in my neighborhood, though, the main thing I remember from that very first night that it hit was that we saw it like a bright lights just down the street from our house, and it turns out one of the houses that was owned by some people, by some friends of ours, which I think it was like for sale at the time. I think it was something like that, it caught on fire, got struck by lightning, the roof was on fire. The rain is coming down, you know, in sheets. And then my friend Michael, his house got hit by a tornado. It's just a small, small tornado that that hit in our area. When? That night that early landfall. Yeah. Like that. You know, that's where that's before all the flooding, before all the flooding and everything. Yeah So, yeah. So this whole week, really, I mean, you know, and it got worse and worse as the week wore on. Totally. You know. So anyway, so that's the seventh anniversary of this. So, you know, whatever rain we get today is kind of welcome. But back then it was like okay. Yeah a little bit much. Yeah. We've it's been dry for sure. Needing some rain. So we, we talked about Hawaii, some national news happening there, some other, weather around the nation. If you will. We're going to go to some cold weather that's kind of interrupted that summer season a bit for folks in part of the California Sierra Nevada mountains. Snow Yeah, snow dusted several parts of the region. And the forecasters there remind everybody that this is the first time that we that they have seen summer snow since 2004. So this doesn't happen all the time. But but it really is a reminder that you know that it can happen. And the temperatures in the region got kicked back up in no time. But there was a group there that was supposed to go and do some running. We came up here with our high school cross-country team for a trail run, meet up, and it's snowing. I think we've decided that we're not going to run, but it's pretty awesome to be up here. I'm a little I would have run if I went all the way up there, but again, this is a reminder that really, the snow can fall any time of the year if conditions are just right for that part of the country. And it they were just right. And we'll definitely see those temperatures get you know, move back up again. But that is something that yeah. Tom Zizka now we're talking about it last night. We're like, you know, if I'd have gone all the way up there. Yeah. You got a little bit of running. Yeah. Get it in. It's kind of wet snow, you know? It's just like a glorified rain, right? Totally. I guess technically snow. So this story, this next story, these astronauts that are in space. Right. They the two astronauts were supposed to be up there for, I think, eight days, not long, not long a week, basically. And they're going to be stuck up there for a grand total of something like eight or 8 or 9 months, when all was said and done. So this has to do with the faulty Boeing Starliner had a helium leak or something. So NASA was going to take the chance of bringing these two astronauts back down to Earth in Boeing's capsule. But now these two are going to have to wait until February. It's not like next week. Like are you going to be up there? We'll come get you next week. No. Till February. So our sister station in New York has more on the tech issues that are delaying the astronauts return to Earth in July. When we heard from astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, they were optimistic that Boeing's Starliner could get them back to Earth. The feeling I have a real good feeling in my heart that the spacecraft will will bring us home, no problem. Human space flight is not easy in any regime, and there have been multiple issues with every spacecraft that's ever been designed. After months floating in space, those hopes are gone. On Saturday, NASA had a formal review of all the technical issues haunting the Starliner, its service module, the persistent helium leaks in the ship's propulsion system, and decided the only way Sunita and Butch are coming back home is on SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft. NASA was very political when it described how it and Boeing couldn't reach common ground on the Starliner. There's just a little disagreement in terms of the level of risk, and that's kind of where it got down to. Boeing has already recorded more than $1 billion in losses on the Starliner. It's hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule. Members of NASA's team described the clash of ideas between Boeing and itself as tense discussions and acknowledged both sides have some work to do to keep its team together. Boeing did a great job building a model. Now the question is, is that model good enough to predict performance for a crew? We have had mistakes done in the past. We lost two space shuttles as a result of there not being a culture in which information could come forward. Those comments were a nod to the 1986 challenger explosion and 2003 Columbia disaster tragedies, which claimed the lives of 14 astronauts. In a statement on X, Boeing says we continue to focus first and foremost on the safety of the crew and spacecraft. We are executing the mission as determined by NASA, and we are preparing the spacecraft for a safe and successful uncrewed return. Those are some tough, hardy people, the Sonny, her husband said. She's in. This is her happy place, so she didn't seem to be too upset yet that she's going to be stuck here until February. I just figured they're going to run out of things to do at some point because, you know, you go up there with assignments and whatever task, experiments, tasks. But I would say after a couple months you're like, okay, well, what else am I going to experiment? They had eight days worth of them, right? And now they're going to be there eight months. Yeah I mean, I have enough food and everything. I mean like that's yeah, there's so many questions. It's just. So they brought some of that freeze dried steak that you had last week. Maybe a little freeze dried steak is going to be good. All right. We're running long on our A block here. So we're going to take a break. Be back right after this Sullivan, Smartsense e Missing. Please pick up the phone and call the police. Remember, you can remain anonymous. Fox 26 YouTube page like and subscribe today. Change all the time when the weather is fine and we're back. So still picking up the pieces after barrel, if you can believe that. Yeah there's a lot still to pick up. It's crazy. So and a lot of it's sort of like people just need to vent right about some of the stuff that didn't go right. So weeks after Hurricane Beryl impacted millions of their customers, CenterPoint energy has been hosting community meetings throughout the coverage area, and they're going to continue to kind of go for a while. Fox 26 is Sherman to sell reports from a recent one in Pasadena. So the CenterPoint CEO recently said that we've heard the calls for action, and we're taking that action right now. One of those efforts are through community meetings right here in Pasadena at the community center. It was focused on customer feedback and asking customers, how can we improve? They had that set up Thursday night. It was set up kind of like a science fair. Each booth showed how they're committed to change. In August, we launched an initiative called the Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative, and that's to improve our resiliency in the system. Also, our communications with our stakeholders. We're on track to accomplish all the goals that we had for the month, including installing 300 trip savers and replacing 1000 wooden poles with fiberglass poles. And we're on track also to clear the vegetation from 2000 miles of electric lines, we asked a few residents what they thought and what they were concerned about. Concern about the lack of response in this last one, and see what we can do as far as feedback to the company, what do you think about the changes that they're trying to make? I don't know what changes are you trying to make? Well, they first off, over here on the left over there. Oh you hadn't. Come on, let's go over there together. Let's go. Let's go check it out. So from what from? We have been told that center point is they have a list of things that they're going to be doing that's going to improve their overall system and their experience with the customers. Right. They said that it's a list of 40 things and they have it broken off into done, almost done will be done. Generally correspond to larger outage events. They also have a new outage map system. It addresses a lot of customer issues. This is showing you the impacted area of the outage is showing you the number of customers that are impacted. It's giving you an estimated restoration and it's also telling you that the crews are on site right now. Okay So that's a lot more detail, a lot more detailed. That's the things that people were talking about. Yes okay. Yes. We heard you here. And so that new outage map updates every few minutes as well, something that a lot of customers will be happy to hear. So this is the third of 16 planned meetings across their area for Center Point. You can find out where those details are, when they're going to be meeting, and even more information on what they've been doing in their resilience initiative plan on Fox26houston.com reporting from Pasadena Sherman Desselle, Fox 26 news. Sherman is great. Oh he's a solid yeah, for sure. He's a great, great with the folks, too. Very personable, very nice guy. Hey, I saw this video this morning. I said we got to show it forecast got to have it. All right. So you cannot hunker down in a storm if you're dangling 240ft in the air. Oh my goodness gracious. So this is the scene from what's called the super Girl Sky flight. This is at Six Flags Mexico. Oh my gosh. Last week the riders were holding on for dear life for ten minutes before the operators were able to lower the ride. Fortunately, nobody was hurt physically, but that's got it. That's got to leave a mental scar that might keep you off of any kind of swing for a while. No, the wind, the rain, it looks cold. It's just it. I'm thankful they're not, like, swaying around too much. Yeah, although, I mean, they're strapped in right there. Nothing's gonna happen to them somewhere, though. Somebody is saying to the other one, I told you, we shouldn't have done this. This was a bad idea. See, this is why, like, my wife will never let the kids get on rides like this. We. I mean, they've done it in the past, but I think it was one of these things. Not a fan. Yeah like it was some similar story came up. She's like, you know what? Forget it. It's not worth it. Never again. There's no reason to do it. So now you have another reason to tell your kids? No. All right. If you don't want to buy the tickets for that ride. All right, so we got a couple minutes, I think, coming up after this for a quick look at what's happening outside. And maybe a little quick glance at the tropics, I think we'll get it covered. Yeah, we'll get it covered after this all the time. When the Missing. Please pick up the phone and call the police. Remember, you can remain anonymous. The Fox 26 YouTube page like and subscribe today. Little change over time. You going to do noon today? Stick around for the news at noon because we're going to be tracking a lot of heavy rain for you. Got a heavy downpour over the Bolivar Peninsula. A round of some big thunderstorms are moving towards you in Hockley, in Magnolia and in Tomball. And really a rough drive on 290 this late morning early afternoon. More heavy stuff there moving through East Bernard and the tropics right now are quiet here in the Gulf of Mexico, but there's a lot to talk about in the extended forecast with a big pattern change moving into Texas all week