Drenching downpours forced World Cup organizers in Houston to cancel the city\u2019s outdoor viewing party on Monday, and then compelled Henry Schriefer, a soccer fan visiting from Germany, to watch a Tuesday match between France and Senegal at a less-than-appealing venue: a downtown food court.<\/p>\n
The tropical storm system responsible for the wet blanket was officially named Arthur on Wednesday, hours before Houston was set to host a match between Portugal and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It\u2019s the first named storm to form in the Atlantic basin this year.<\/p>\n
NRG Stadium, temporarily renamed Houston Stadium for the World Cup, is covered, so the match was not at any risk of being delayed. But the weather this week has been less than ideal. The brunt of the rain fell on Monday, flooding parts of the region and prompting organizers to cancel the official FIFA Fan Festival downtown.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just knew it was not going to be a good situation to open,\u201d said Chris Canetti, president of the city\u2019s World Cup organizing committee.<\/p>\n
Showers and storms also moved through on Tuesday, forcing Mr. Schriefer, 20, into the food court, while fans aged 21 and over filled sports bars. By late afternoon, the rain let up, and the sun was out in time for Argentina play Algeria.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt turned out to be a very nice evening,\u201d said Matt Moreland, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office for the Houston area. Mr. Moreland said that, throughout the week, the Weather Service had been in touch with tournament and local officials about weather threats.<\/p>\n
Tropical Storm Arthur posed little threat to the match on Wednesday. The system was expected to move east along the Gulf Coast toward Louisiana. (It also posed no threat to the Dallas area in North Texas, where England was set to play Croatia, despite some misplaced concern about the weather in the British news media.)<\/p>\n
In Houston, some fans who arrived early for Wednesday\u2019s match had to deal with light showers while waiting to enter NRG Stadium. But an hour before kickoff, the rain let up and the sun began to peek through the clouds.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuckily,\u201d Mr. Canetti said, \u201cI think we dodged the bullet here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Drenching downpours forced World Cup organizers in Houston to cancel the city\u2019s outdoor viewing party on Monday, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":340923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[119874,56,98070,58,57,114907,121561,731,3058,121560],"class_list":["post-340922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-fans-persons","tag-houston","tag-houston-tex","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-international-federation-of-association-football-fifa","tag-nrg-stadium-houston","tag-soccer","tag-tex","tag-world-cup-2026-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/340923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}