Flash flood threat for much of Texas

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Flood Expert Alex Sosnowski discusses the rain and potential flooding in Texas.

Transcript

00:00Joining us right now is AccuWeather flooding expert Alex is now asking, of course Alex,

00:05if you're looking to get a lot of rain in Texas, this is certainly one of the patterns that you

00:10and I've seen for many years be able to produce rainfall amounts that we're projecting right now.

00:18Yeah, it's a slow moving upper low or a mid-level low, what we mean in the middle part of the

00:23atmosphere, and what that represents is a puddle of chilly air. So when you get that puddle of

00:28chilly air, you get the heating near the ground, drenching showers and thunderstorms bubble up in

00:33that, and it's a very slow moving feature. So you can get day after day after day of these showers

00:39and thunderstorms, and the result is what you see here, a tremendous amount of rainfall. This goes

00:45right on through Sunday. We've already seen about an inch or two across a good chunk of those darker

00:49shaded areas there, and more is coming. You can get one to two inches of rain an hour in some of these

00:55more drenching thundershowers. That won't sit very well. The soil in much of this region here

01:00is moist to saturated, so a lot of it's going to run off. Areas to the southwest of Austin and San

01:07Antonio, as you and I were talking about on the air, off the air, is very hard panned, so the soil

01:13moisture that is a matter, it just runs off whatever downpours you get. Alex, major rivers that are going

01:19to be impacted in this area. Number one, that's my first question. Number two, you know, how bad can

01:29the flooding be along these rivers? A lot of these streams and rivers are already elevated, so that's

01:34a problem. So whatever rain we get, the rivers are already primed to rise quickly. We're looking at the

01:41Brazos, the Trinity, the Sabine, Sulphur, I think even the mainstem of the red there, and you get farther

01:48out to the northeast, too. Excuse my pronunciation of this if I get it wrong, the Bayou d'Orsay,

01:55and also the Arkansas River over in Arkansas, because this extends over into Arkansas as well,

02:00pretty much along the I-35 corridor just to the east a bit, and also segments of I-30 and I-20 in

02:06this zone will be hit by the rain the hardest. Alex, also, you and I talked, we both have the

02:14concern, and we may be adjusting this. Wouldn't be surprised if we brought that two- to four-inch

02:20rain down toward the Texas coast as well. Yeah, what's been happening with this kind of a setup

02:26is the thunderstorms erupt during the day over the interior, central interior southeastern Texas.

02:32They go to town, and they start to wander then toward the coast at night, but instead of them

02:37breaking down like we typically see with this moist flow coming off the gulf, they're able to survive

02:42and move right on down to the coast, even down to the lower Rio Grande Valley, too. So some of this

02:48rainfall here could be eclipsed from what we've been saying. So that means Houston, I mean, you can

02:54get a torrential downpour, you get an inch or two of rain, and folks there know that when you get that

02:59kind of rainfall in an hour's time, which is possible, it can certainly lead to some street

03:03flooding. You were mentioning before that a lot of the rivers are already primed across central and

03:09north Texas. The one area, and you know, we see this a lot in Texas, Dr. Joe Sobel, who you and I

03:16worked with for decades, would always tell us that most droughts in Texas, most end in floods,

03:24and this could be a situation like that. Although, when you look at the drought monitor, Alex,

03:30and you mentioned this, most of the heavy rain looks like it falls out of the area that desperately

03:36needs it the most. It does. And we've been nickel and diming, chipping away at a lot of this drought

03:41area, which was much more extensive in the spring. And that whole concept of it takes a flood to break

03:49a drought. The reason for that is it takes a strong weather system to snap the dry pattern. And this is

03:55pretty much it. You will get some of that, though. I think we will chip away more and probably wipe out

04:00some of that drought there southwest of Austin and San Antonio with this. But the soil there is very

04:06hard pan, rocky. So a lot of that rain that falls is just going to immediately run off. That can lead

04:12to flash flooding. Watch those dry washes, the low water crossings. They can be raging torrents in a

04:18matter of minutes in a situation like this. All right. Accu with a flooding expert. Alex is now

04:23so yeah, Alex, thanks again for joining us here.

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