Good evening everyone!  We’ve had a few strong to severe storms pop up in various parts of the state today, mainly across the southern panhandle, southern north Texas and northeast Texas.  Most of these will die out as we lose daytime heating, with exception to the line of storms in the southern panhandle which may be able to hold it together into the early nighttime hours. Gusty winds, frequent lightning and small hail will continue to be a threat for a few more hours.

A ridge of strong high pressure resides to our west over the desert southwest, while a trough of low pressure remains stretched across the heartland down into delta states.  And it looks like we’re stuck between these two features at least into the weekend. The western ridge is expected to build east just a bit over the next couple of days and the result will likely be a downtick in shower and storm activity through Wednesday.  Folks along the coast will continue to see the typical afternoon scattered shower activity brought on by the daily seabreeze, could see a few very isolated chances for pop up showers across southern north texas and into east Texas, but other than that, things look pretty warm, humid and mostly dry until we get closer to the weekend.  We could see a weak front move into the panhandle Wednesday which may kick off a few storms.  By Thursday, high pressure will shift back west a bit with an upper disturbance dropping down from the north.  It’s still too early to say for certain what that will mean in terms of rain chances for Thursday through Sunday…the 4th of July weekend…but the panhandle and parts of north Texas could see continued scattered chances each afternoon and evening through the next weekend.  More on that as we get closer!

In the meantime…here’s a look at the overnight lows, tomorrow’s highs and chances for rain, plus a look at the heat index (“feels like”) temps expected tomorrow afternoon.  All in all, pretty typical summertime weather!