It’s been a long day so just a quick post this evening.
We’ve had a nice break from the heavy rain for several hours, and I think that will continue for at least a little while longer. However I’m watching the movement of some storms over central Texas with some concern, as they may move into the Houston metro area tonight. They have become moderately more organized during the last couple of hours.
This post will summarize the remarkable rain event Houston experienced during the last 24 hours and look ahead at what we can expect during the rest of the work week.
THE FLOODS
It is not an overstatement to say this was the Houston region’s worst flooding event in nearly 15 years, since Tropical Storm Allison deluged the upper Texas coast and dumped in excess of 30 inches of rain over parts of the city.
A large area of showers and thunderstorms has continued to move into the Houston metropolitan area this morning, and the entire region is under a flash flood warning through 1 pm CT. This post will discuss the immediate effects of these devastating floods and then discuss how we may see an improvement in conditions later today.
FLOODING
Due to 12 to 18 inches of rain falling overnight across western and northwestern parts of the Houston metro area a number of bayous have exceeded their banks. This has led to dozens of high-water rescues and neighborhood flooding. According to the Harris County Flood Control District the following waterways (13 of 22 watersheds) are currently flooding homes in the county:
Water has inundated homes in more than 100 neighborhoods, primarily concentrated on the western side of the county. These rains have affected a much larger area than the Memorial Day Floods, which were concentrated in a relatively small, but heavily populated area of southwestern Houston.
We are at the point where another 3 to 6 inches of rain today across the metro Houston area would exacerbate flooding of these waterways, and put much of the rest of the county into a truly catastrophic flooding situation. But will that occur?
Storms continue for much of the Houston metro region this morning, as a line of showers sags slowly into central and southeastern parts of the city. But overall we’re not seeing a whole lot of movement as a major line of storms set up along the I-10 corridor to the west of Houston.
This is largely due to a convergence of winds coming down from the north and meeting with more winds coming off the Gulf of Mexico. This does two things: Convergence at the surface leads to rising air, a key ingredient of thunderstorms, and it is not allowing the storms to move much. Here’s what this looks like in terms of surface winds.
