Earlier, we posted that we expected the heavy rainfall to wane between 6pm and 9pm this evening. Unfortunately, the storms have sustained themselves as the sun has gone down and continued to pile on rain totals—especially to the southwest of Houston in areas such as Sugar Land and Richmond. Regions there have now recorded 8 to 10 inches, nearing the exceptional amounts recorded in Humble and Kingwood earlier today and this afternoon.

So what happens now? With the sun now falling below the horizon, the rain cooled atmosphere will have less energy to sustain itself, and from a pure physics point of view, these heavy rain showers really should really ebb over the next 3 to 6 hours. But it is hard to have overly much confidence in this forecast given how much we’ve missed already today. We’re hoping for a break later tonight and perhaps Wednesday morning.

Where does this leave us? Quite frankly, we didn’t anticipate that the rains would be as intense as they were today. Certainly, we didn’t expect 10 inches of rain for any part of metro Houston, nor the need for high water rescues as are presently ongoing in southwest Houston. Yet here we are on the first day of a multi-day event, with soils now thoroughly sodden; some bayous near bank full; river concerns; and more.

Forced to guess, I’d say we’ve got two more major rounds of storms to worry about after this evening. There likely will be widespread showers on Wednesday night and Thursday, and then some kind of mess on Friday and Saturday. If those rounds are as bad as we’ve had today, then we’re going to see a much worse situation than now, but I don’t think we can quite say that yet.

We’ll be back with a full report in the morning.