Drought relief on the way as heavy rain and storms approach Texas

Wet weather is on the way to Texas in the last days of March, hopefully providing some drought relief but potentially causing flooding as well.

Transcript

00:00We are watching out for some of those thunderstorms popping up for the Dallas Metro, so

00:04here's the broad view. As we take a closer view, we have now two severe thunderstorm warnings in

00:10effect for the Dallas Metro. The first one's going to be pretty much right over downtown Dallas,

00:15just to the east here along I-45 and the I-20 corridor right there, right where I-30, I-20,

00:23and I-45 meet there, just to the east of downtown Dallas. That's where this one severe thunderstorm

00:29warning is. This one producing a lot of lightning. I have lightning icons on there because this

00:33normally shows the intensification and the maturity of a severe thunderstorm, and you can see this

00:38storm right there definitely maintaining its lightning count, so that means that this storm is

00:43maintaining its intensity, so this one's going to be lasting here for a while. Now off to the

00:47southwest, this is a storm that was showing in that Dallas camera that we were watching out,

00:52so that's the cleave, that's going to be just to the west there of I-35 west there, southwest of

00:57downtown Dallas. So this storm is moving off to the east relatively slow, so these slow movers

01:02could produce some heavy rainfall, so there could be some very localized flooding here with some of

01:07these areas, but this storm is also producing a lot of lightning. It popped up very fast,

01:11so there could even be some small hails associated with not only this storm, but that storm there to

01:16the east of Dallas as well. So this is going to be a pretty impactful afternoon drive home there

01:20for folks living in the Dallas Metro, especially along I-35 west there, off to the southwest of

01:25the Dallas Metro. That's what we're tracking right now, but as we look at the overall broad view

01:30of what we're watching out for this evening, here's an update look at your storm zone. So yes,

01:34the Dallas Metro is seeing the storms right now, but as we head into this evening, this storm zone

01:38will expand to include southern Oklahoma, to include portions of Arkansas, and portions there

01:43of Louisiana here as we head throughout the next 6 to 12 hours. But after that, as we head into

01:48late Wednesday and throughout the day on Thursday, the main focus will then shift to the Texas

01:53Gulf Coast. We'll see heavy rainfall for Houston, Austin, San Antonio, even down south towards

01:58Brownsville and Progreso in far southern parts of Texas. As far as how much rainfall we're expected

02:03to see, we'll have that band of rainfall here for tonight and this evening, but overall look at that

02:08giant blob of rainfall there across the Texas Gulf Coast. That's where we're going to see the

02:12heaviest rainfall with our Accu-Ed local storm max over a foot of rainfall possible, but that darkest

02:18shade of green is where it looks like we'll see 4 to 8 inches possible here as we head throughout

02:22this evening and as we head throughout the next couple of days. So Jeff, good news is this is

02:27definitely going to help put a dent in the drought, but the bad news is most droughts normally end in

02:31floods. That's true and you know it'd be nice if we could get maybe three events like this over the

02:36course of a couple of months spread out instead of a big huge hurricane or tropical system to dump

02:42twice these amounts at once. But again, that area of 4 to 8 inches is concerning for flooding.