Calmer Skies Ahead for Flood-Stricken Texas
After catastrophic and deadly flooding across much of Texas and Oklahoma over the last few weeks, a calmer and mercifully drier pattern is settling in across the region, and it looks like it will stick around well into the start of June.
An area of high pressure is settling in across Texas behind a cold front currently moving through the region, and drier air is expected to work its way into the hard-hit southern Plains for most of the first week of June. While showers and thunderstorms are still in the picture across parts of both states for portions of the upcoming week, it will be very isolated in nature and rainfall amounts shouldn’t come close to the record-setting levels observed over much of May.
There is the chance for a more pronounced rain on Friday and Saturday in Oklahoma with an area of low pressure, but that is still several days out and conditions across the state will stay mostly dry until then, allowing swollen creeks, rivers and lakes a much-needed opportunity to level.
The Dallas, Texas area experienced more serious flooding on Saturday morning behind another push of heavy rainfall that brought the monthly total to 16.96″ (as of Saturday afternoon), a total that obliterated the previous May record of 13.66″. Austin, Texas and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma have also seen their rainiest Mays on record, and for Oklahoma City, the city’s 19.48″ month-to-date total obliterated the previous rainiest month on record, 14.66″ in June of 1989.
A sudden rainstorm late Monday night dumped almost a foot of rain in just a few hours on the west side of Houston, Texas, leading to widespread serious flooding that has killed at least two dozen people in Texas over the last week and another four in Oklahoma. But for now, a break from the rain and temperatures mostly in the 80s is in order.
Stay with WeatherNation TV and www.WeatherNationTV.com for updated forecasts and all the latest on the Texas and Oklahoma flood situation.
Meteorologist Chris Bianchi – Photo: Bruce Gardner, Jr., submitted on Facebook
Source: WeatherNation Calmer Skies Ahead for Flood-Stricken Texas