High atmospheric pressure has been dominating Texas’ forecast over the past six to eight weeks, bringing intense heat, lots of sunshine, and hardly any rain. However, changes are coming to the upper-level weather pattern on Thursday, as high pressure will temporarily shift away, allowing for a weak cold front to move into parts of North Texas.
While this front won’t affect temperatures in a meaningful way, it likely will bring widely scattered thunderstorms to parts of the state. Some of the storms could be strong. Here’s a look at where rain chances will be highest, as well as what to expect locally in San Antonio.
Thursday storm chances
Rain chances will be highest across the northern half of the state on Thursday. This includes parts of West Texas — from Lubbock to Abilene —eastward toward Wichita Falls, Sherman-Denison and the DFW metroplex. Rain chances in this region are expected to be between 30% and 60%, with the most widespread rain expected near the Texas-Oklahoma border.
A few storms could become rather strong and capable of producing brief downpours, frequent lightning and strong wind gusts up to 50 mph. Much of this area is also under a level 1 of 4 risk of excessive rainfall, meaning that isolated flash flooding is possible.
In terms of timing, storms will begin to develop just after noon, but will become much more widespread between 3 and 7 p.m. As activity pushes south, DFW’s best chance of rain is expected between 6 and 10 p.m…