Watch out: More rain on the way
Low pressure system brings rounds of rain to the area, and forecasters warn not to put away your umbrellas yet
A trucker drives through high water on West Mount Houston near Interstate 45 on Tuesday. After a day of rain soaked the Bayou City and flooded major roadways, forecasters had more bad news — wet weather is in store for the rest of the week.
Even after a day of rain soaking the Bayou City, flooding homes and roadways, forecasters are predicting more wet weather in store for the rest of the week.
Rough rains late Monday and into Tuesday brought 4 to 7 inches of water, pushing the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood watch through Wednesday morning that included Harris, Chambers, Galveston, Liberty, Montgomery, Polk and San Jacinto counties.
“There’s a low pressure system that has become basically stationary across Southeast Texas, and it’s helping to produce these rounds of showers and thunderstorms,” said NWS meteorologist Josh Lichter.
The system struck western parts of the county before moving east, setting up Chambers and Liberty counties for a thorough drenching Tuesday night into Wednesday.
The first round of storms brought some 6 inches of overnight rain, leaving motorists stranded and homes inundated Tuesday morning, especially in the hardest-hit western parts of Harris County.
Some spots near Katy, Mission Bend and Jersey Village saw up to 8 inches of rain, according to NWS meteorologist Charles Roeseler.
The volleys of water caused enough street flooding to require around two dozen water rescues, mostly along Westpark and I-10, the Houston Fire Department reported.
Early in the day, bayous spilled over their banks across the metro area, invading nearby homes and businesses. In the northern part of the county, Halls Bayou overflowed near Mount Houston, Interstate 45 and Sweetwater, according to Jeff Lindner, meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District.
Closer to the downtown area, White Oak Bayou at Heights brimmed over before cresting around sunrise at 34 feet, according to the Harris County Flood Warning System. But there was relatively little flooding surrounding the bayou, and its water level fell 2 to 3 feet by mid-morning Tuesday, Lindner said.
Water flowed about 2½ feet over the banks of South Mayde Creek near Greenhouse, flooding Cullen Park. But nearby residents seemed to have narrowly dodged water damage.
“We thought (the water was) pretty close to getting in those homes,” Lindner said.
Around 4,600 Houstonarea households were without power early Tuesday, and flooding shuttered some streets and sparked a late start at Houston Community College.
Just as the skies started to clear and waters receded, Houston was hit with a second round of rain Tuesday afternoon.
As the daylight faded, meteorologists were still predicting more bad weather ahead overnight. Lichter put nighttime rain chances around 60 percent in Houston, with the worst of the storms soaking areas to the east, including the Bolivar Peninsula and Chambers and Liberty counties.
“The heaviest areas could dump 6 to 8 inches. That would not be out of the question,” Lichter said Tuesday. “Similar to what happened over Harris County last night.”
Even if the worst of it hits to the east, Lichter cautioned that it wouldn’t take much rain in the Houston area to spark some flooding on such saturated soil.
“That’s why there’s a flash flood watch in effect,” he said. The watch was set to expire at 8 a.m. Wednesday.
The remainder of the week has a decreasing chance of rain each day, Lichter said.
Wednesday has a 50 percent chance of precipitation, but by Thursday that number drops to 40 percent and by Friday, 30 percent.
By the weekend, drier skies should see temperatures back in the low to mid-90s.
Overall, it’s been a fairly rainy August — and that’s because of low pressure systems like the one over southeast Texas this week, according to Space City Weather editor Eric Berger. Typically, Texas summers see high pressure areas over large swaths of the state.
“And that shuts down rain chances,” Berger said. “This August has been really different in that we have not seen those dominant areas of high pressure and we’ve seen a lot more rain because there hasn’t been that dominant high pressure.”