No Holiday From The Storms
What a rain. Since 6pm Saturday over 3" fell over a large swath of Dallas and eastern Tarrant Co into Denton and Collin counties. It was a huge footprint: the flooding rain stretched from Hill county north to the Red River:
Couple of things about the 3.30" of rain that fell since midnight at DFW. It the only the third 3"-plus rain at DFW in the last four-and-a-half years. This May is now the wettest month we've had in 33 years (May in 1982 had over 13" of rain fall). It's now the wettest Spring in 20 years:
North Texas had been in a drought for the last four years before the Spring rains arrived. It's turned lakes at historic lows to above full pool. Joe Pool is at the highest its ever been:
We used Spring to get sprung from our four year drought. We paid the price with flooding and tornadoes. We had 50 tornadoes the ENTIRE YEAR in '96, we are close to that number and not even half-way thru 2015:
Texoma Lake is the area's largest lake and a source of drinking water in both north Texas in southern Oklahoma. It went up 5.5ft in the last three days alone. Given the size of the lake that is a huge amount of water. The lake rose to the spillway for only the 4th time in its history:
Many area rivers are in flood. The Trinity at Dallas is in major flood (at 40ft) and will crest tomorrow at 40.3ft. This is the highest it's been in about five years:
Two weak tornadoes (#46 and #47 for the year) formed on the leading northern edge of a rare convective vortex that went right over the Metroplex this morning. The strongest was one in Irving (about a mile long path) that passed just to the east of the DFW Airport. The other occurred about the same time (just after 2:30am) in Farmer's Branch (about a five-mile long path).
THE WEATHER PATTERN HASN'T CHANGED. MORE STORMS TOMORROW
We still have a deep upper-level trough parked over the desert southwest. The upper-level low currently over Las Vegas will be here tomorrow:
The Severe Weather Threat is high, we'll likely have a watch issued for our area. The primary risk will be damaging winds and large hail but isolated tornadoes are possible. Any areas that are impacted with the heavy rain will likely suffer flash flooding. It should be a quiet morning but the storm line will quickly close upon us by mid-day:
The good news is that most of this activity will be east of the metro by later in the afternoon. The bad news is that the storms will be bad:
All of north Texas is under a FLASH FLOOD WATCH thru tomorrow evening. Heavy rain is possible with these storms:
We'll have to watch the dryline on Tuesday for storm development. They won't be wide-spread but the chance they'll be severe is very high. This storms will threaten our western counties during the late afternoon and could reach into the Metroplex by evening:
. Storm risk continue in the week ahead. The worst of it looks to arrive... what for it... next weekend. The wet and stormy Spring continues to the bitter end:
