Houston continues to face the prospect of a wet Labor Day Weekend—but we’re not concerned about anything more than the potential for some street flooding and spoiled outdoor barbecues with intermittent showers and thunderstorms.

However, we did want to update you on the potential for tropical mischief in the Gulf of Mexico next week. Some forecast models have become a little more bullish on low pressure forming in the northern Gulf next week, which could lead to development of a tropical storm. As of Saturday morning, the National Hurricane Center predicts a 40 percent chance that a tropical depression or storm will form during the next five days.

There are a lot of uncertainties with this system, and forecast models are having a difficult time resolving them. Of course, everyone will want to know where this will go. However, that’s simply impossible to say without a reasonably well defined low pressure system, and that probably won’t exist for a couple of days.

Overall I think there are probably two main scenarios, and which one happens depends upon the strength of a high pressure system over the eastern United States.

Scenario One: The tropical system holds to a more or less west-northwest movement through the middle of next week, as high pressure over the eastern United States does not block some northward movement. This brings the bulk of the tropical moisture more toward Louisiana than Texas, and most likely a tropical storm does not form.

Scenario Two: With stronger high pressure, the system is forced nearly due west once it reaches the northern Gulf of Mexico. In this case, with more time over water, the tropical system has the potential to become a tropical depression or perhaps a storm as it moves toward the Texas coast late next week. In this case the Houston region could see some significant rainfall, but at this point the likelihood of anything extreme (i.e. 10 inches or more in a couple of days) seems fairly low.

In any case, we always want to watch tropical weather in the Gulf of Mexico, during September, carefully. And so Matt and I will do just that.