Inches Of Rain Possible Across North Texas As Flash Flood Watch Runs Until Thursday Night
FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) — The Flash Flood Watch for North Texas continues until Thursday night. Widespread amounts of 2" to 3" of rainfall are possible, with isolated areas getting near five inches of precipitation.
An approaching weak cold front will stall over us later today and become the focus of heavy rain. A few strong storms are possible that could produce 1" hail and damaging winds. It is expected that the stalled front will continue to generate waves of rain over the same areas tonight and overnight.
Making the situation more worrisome is additional moisture arriving from the Pacific Ocean and Hurricane Pamela (it come onshore in western Mexico this morning).
There is already lots of moisture in the atmosphere from southern winds out of the Gulf of Mexico.
A large area of moisture-laden air in the mid-levels of the atmosphere (around two miles overhead) will arrive overnight through tomorrow morning and help increase the flooding risk already going on.
Rainfall amounts will likely be concentrated in a narrow band a couple of counties wide. The various forecast models continue to forecast very impressive amounts:
It has been a while since a big rain hit the DFW Airport, 50 days have passed since the DFW Airport recorded anything over an inch of rain in one day. The average of the four forecast models shown above is almost twice that.
Please try limit any road travel tonight, especially in the late night or early morning hours. Most of flooding fatalities occur in automobiles at night. If a Flash Flood Warning is issued for your area (the DFW Weather App will alert you if you have set it up to send them to you) that means flooding is occurring. These warnings usually last about 2-3 hours, delay your travel until the warning expires.
I'll update you more on the situation at 4:00 p.m. on CBS 11 News. Join us.
