FXUS64 KHGX 011141 AFDHGX Area Forecast Discussion National Weather Service Houston/Galveston TX 541 AM CST Thu Jan 1 2026 ...New AVIATION... .KEY MESSAGES... - Abnormally low water levels in Galveston Bay will continue through at least Thursday's low tide cycle. Continued low water is likely due to the very low astronomical tides occurring. - After a short cold stretch, weather is warming through normal on its way back to a warm period late in the week. Look for highs on Friday to reach back into the 70s and lower 80s, with low potential to get even warmer. - Our next cold front looks to arrive early this weekend, but it looks to be a weekend. There is a very low chance - less than 15 percent - for brief, light showers, with a modest dip in temperatures for the weekend. With forecast highs in the 70s, even post-frontal temps will be above average. && .DISCUSSION... Issued at 1212 AM CST Thu Jan 1 2026 Well, cold lovers, hopefully y'all enjoyed this sharp, but very short bit of cold weather because we now have onshore flow returning with southerly to southwesterly winds, and the return of warmer, more humid air. In fact, despite starting Wednesday with a widespread light freezing affecting all but the core of Houston and the immediate Gulf coast, highs in the afternoon were already above average for the final day of 2025. With onshore flow in place, we'll continue to warm up through Friday. Though a few warm spots managed to reach 70 to wrap up 2025, almost the entire area outside of cool spots towards the Piney Woods should reach into the lower 70s to begin 2026. Friday looks warmer still, as most places away from the coast look to crack back up above the 80 degree mark. The very warmest spots in the rural west look to make a run for the mid 80s! In a forecast that may be a bit aggressive, I swapped the deterministic NBM for the NBM's median of the distribution again, which ends with a slight boost to temps for most. Finding ourselves under an upper trough, albeit a weak one, and ahead of the arrival of our next cold front, it seemed reasonable to hedge above the "official" NBM numbers again, and hitting for the middle of the probabilistic distribution seemed a good, conservative way of doing that. Of course, as temps and especially dewpoints surge over waters that have been cooled mostly into the upper 50s, we can probably look for some coastal fog to sneak back into the picture...perhaps as early as Thursday night, but I'm hoping we can hold things off until Friday night. The southwesterly wind direction is a poor one for dense fog development, but with these dewpoints over those water temps, some patchy fog appears likely. And while some cooler temps lie beyond Friday's torchy day as a front moves through very early Saturday, don't expect anything close to a repeat of the last cold front. This is instead, a weak Pacific front. If it weren't getting a boost from a trough passing by through the Great Plains at the same time, I wouldn't even knock down temperatures at all this weekend. But, with that extra little bit of help, I'm content to follow the NBM in a slide back down into the 70s. Cooler than Friday will be for sure, but still a decent margin warmer than early January averages for the area. Another low-end possibility with this frontal passage is a few light showers. This front will be too weak to be a proper focus for frontal convection, so don't be looking for that. But with plenty of moisture and some light isentropic upglide ahead of and on the frontal surface, I could see us squeezing out a small handful of extremely light showers here and there. Accumulation would likely be a trace, and certainly not more than a few hundredths, so my PoPs for this are still less than 15 percent and not enough to even trigger slight chance wording...as the probability of measurable rain at any one spot will be that low. But somewhere in the area? Getting some traces? I could see that happening. Beyond the front, I continue to roll with NBM pretty close to verbatim, as there are no strong signals for any sort of specifically meaningful trends in the weather, and the best choice is almost certainly to stick with something close to the consensus of the model guidance. && .AVIATION... (12Z TAF Issuance) Issued at 538 AM CST Thu Jan 1 2026 Other than some patchy fog early this morning, expect VFR conditions to prevail through the rest of the day along with increasing south to south-southwest flow. Winds today are expected to average 7-12 knots, with occasional higher gusts. There are mixed signals for some MVFR cigs/vis after 0900 UTC Friday morning, with the best chance of sub-VFR occurring across our southern zones from IAH to the coast. By tomorrow morning, winds are expected to increase from the southwest, becoming sustained in the 10-15 knot range. && .MARINE... Issued at 1212 AM CST Thu Jan 1 2026 Low water conditions continue for Galveston Bay and will continue deeper into the week stretch of very low astronomical tides. The low water advisory has been extended through Thursday, and are very likely to need to continue into the weekend. Friday is a somewhat ambiguous day, as low tides may come above the typical threshold for a low water advisory, but only by a small amount before heading back below the threshold for Saturday's low tide cycle. Southerly to southwesterly winds have developed today, and will continue through Friday. With these winds, humidity will increase enough that patchy fog can develop during the overnight hours Thursday night and Friday night, but there is still considerable uncertainty in how significant fog development will be. It seems reasonable to expect at least some patchy fog, and the forecast reflects that, with potential for more dense spots if conditions align properly. && .PRELIMINARY POINT TEMPS/POPS... College Station (CLL) 73 59 84 51 / 0 0 0 0 Houston (IAH) 73 61 84 57 / 0 0 0 0 Galveston (GLS) 69 63 74 61 / 0 10 0 0 && .HGX WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES... TX...None. GM...Low Water Advisory until 6 PM CST this evening for GMZ335. && $$ DISCUSSION...Luchs AVIATION...Self MARINE...Luchs