Above-average rainfall means below-average temperatures

Forecast calls for more rain tonight

Texarkana has received about twice as much rainfall—4.5 inches—since Aug. 1. than it usually gets all month. And more rain is on the way.

“It’s not very common, but we are stuck in an unusual pattern where we are getting these rain disturbances after rain disturbance,” said Davyon Hill, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Shreveport, La.

Hill said a consistent ridge of high pressure out West puts a deep trough on the eastern side of the Rockies.

“That puts us in a pattern that is more common in April or May,” he said. “We keep getting rain disturbances from Kansas and Oklahoma and they end up in our area. That’s a Northwest flow,” he said.

Locally, heavy rainfall will be possible tonight through Monday across Southeast Oklahoma, extreme Northeast Texas, and Southwest

Arkansas, with the threat for flash flooding and rises on area rivers across the Red and Sulphur river basins according to the NWS.

Texarkana could see about 2 more inches while areas west could see as much as 4 inches.

“We can’t rule out flash flooding. Besides a lot of rain,

all of the humidity we have had holds in moisture,” Hill said.

A cold front dropping into the central Plains and lingering throughout the weekend will generate the multiple rounds of showers and thunderstorms.

A result of the rain is that it is keeping daytime high temperatures about five degrees below normal.

“Texarkana has not reached 100 this summer, 96 degrees has been the high,” Hill said.

A 60 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms is expected for Texarkana Sunday through Tuesday. High temperatures should be in the mid80s with lows in the mid-70s.