Wildfire smoke blows into Houston's sky Thursday, Saharan haze arrives next week

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- We've now added haze to our hot and humid weather pattern, and that haze will get even thicker on Thursday as wildfire smoke all the way from Utah and Nevada makes it into the sky high over Southeast Texas. While the air may clear up a big over the weekend, another round of haze will arrive Monday, this time all the way from the Sahara Desert.

Overnight we expect temperatures will dip into the mid 70s with slightly drier air in place. Outside of Houston it could even dip into the low 70s. Once the sun rises, any low level clouds will burn off fairly quickly, but you won't see much blue in the sky after those clouds part. That's because a thicker plume of elevated wildfire smoke will blow in from the north. Because the smoke is primarily over 10,000 feet above the ground, there shouldn't be too much of an impact on our air quality. Temperatures will heat up into the low-to-mid 90s with the heat index peaking around 105 degrees, just shy of Heat Advisory criteria. Rain chances will remain near zero percent.

How is the weekend shaping up?

We'll get a slightly stronger southerly breeze over the weekend, keeping lows near 80 and highs in the mid 90s. Enough moisture is back on Sunday to generate a 20% chance of isolated showers.

What are you tracking in the tropics?

There is a large plume of thick Saharan dust entering the Caribbean that should eventually reach us here in Southeast Texas early next week. Visit our Tropical Update page for a more in-depth tropical weather discussion and forecast.

13 ALERT RADAR MAPS:
Southeast Texas
Houston
Harris County
Galveston County
Montgomery/Walker/San Jacinto/Polk/Grimes Counties
Fort Bend/Wharton/Colorado Counties
Brazoria/Matagorda Counties

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