Governor Greg Abbott has issued a disaster declaration for 101 Texas counties as severe storms continue to threaten the state. The National Weather Service (NWS) forecast calls for a prolonged heavy rainfall event to continue to take shape this week across South Texas and into Louisiana through Thursday. And now, the National Hurricane Center has announced Tropical Storm Arthur is expected to form Wednesday and make landfall later that night near the Texas-Louisiana state line. That’s triggered a Tropical Storm Watch in Texas and Louisiana. See the latest track. Arthur will be the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Large parts of Texas and Louisiana have already experienced dangerous flash flooding, since heavy rainfall began early Monday in Central Texas, directly affecting cities from Marshall to the Shreveport-Bossier area and beyond.
In fact, Shreveport Police reported that they responded to more than 60 stranded vehicles and 25 car crashes on Monday, June 15, after flash flooding swept through multiple parts of the city. As the Texas Newsroom reports, NWS meteorologist Cody Lindsey says “We're going to be looking at repeated rounds of heavy rainfall potentially impacting southeast Texas, including the Houston metro areas as we go through the middle of the week, with potential for heavy rainfall and flash flooding.”
Lindsey says tropical moisture from Mexico is feeding into the storm system, raising the risk of severe weather not only in Texas, but across much of the Southern U.S., also impacting parts of Oklahoma and Arkansas, as well.
By Tuesday morning, July 16, nearly the entire state of Louisiana remained under a flood watch, with parts of the central and southern portions of Louisiana under flash flood warnings, including areas in and around Alexandria in the Red River Radio listening area.
LSU Health Climatologist Barry Keim echoed many of the same cautions as the NWS, saying that the tropical moisture is interacting with a stalled cold front. That’s expected to produce between 3-to-10 inches of rain over the next few days in Louisiana. “When you have a very juiced atmosphere with these high, high humidity levels this kind of potential exists for big time flooding.”
Keim adds that some of the biggest rainfall totals are likely to come today and Wednesday. But Keim also emphasizes that a heavy downpour is possible every day this week, especially during the afternoon hours.
In Texas, as part of the state's response, Abbott directed the Texas Division of Emergency Management earlier today to increase 24-hour operations at the Texas State Emergency Operations Center. This follows his previous instruction to agency last week to activate resources in anticipation of flooding.
Visit DriveTexas.org for real-time road conditions, find comprehensive severe weather information at TexasReady.gov, locate flood information online at TexasFlood.org, and access all-hazards preparedness tips at tdem.texas.gov/prepare.
