Our hot and mostly dry weather will continue through this week with very little rain in the forecast and temperatures creeping closer to the low 100s.  Rain chances today will be slim with only scattered showers expected near the Red River/north Texas, and a 10% to 20% chance of pop up showers across far southeast Texas and along the coast.  The higher elevations of west Texas will also have continued chances for afternoon storms as well.  For the rest of us…nada to zilch.

Highs today, still close to or just above seasonal average for this time of the year.  Heat index values will be highest where more humidity is present, mainly east of the I-35 corridor and across coastal and deep south Texas.  Coastal areas between Brownsville and the Houston/Galveston metro will see the highest heat index values this afternoon between 105 and 106.

We’re continuing to monitor the tropics closely this week.  Disturbance 1 is now showing the better chances of becoming a tropical storm within the next 5 days. Once formed, it will be known as Tropical Storm Earl. Its current projected trajectory will bring it into the western Caribbean in about 2 days.  From there, forecast models are taking the system over the Yucatan Peninsula and into the Bay of Campeche later this week. Its projected path after that is unclear, but most of the guidance at this point keeps it south of Texas making landfall somewhere in Mexico.  The system on its heels…Disturbance 2, while looking rather meager at this time, will still need to be watched as the long range models are picking up on potential development later in the week and a path which may steer it just a bit north and into the Gulf by next week. That’s way too far away to be certain of anything, but we’ll continue to keep an eye on it.