Skip to player
Skip to main content
Skip to footer
Search
Connect
Watch fullscreen
Like
Comments
Bookmark
Share
Add to Playlist
Report
Flash flood threat for much of Texas
AccuWeather
Follow
6/11/2025
AccuWeather Flood Expert Alex Sosnowski discusses the rain and potential flooding in Texas.
Category
🗞
News
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
Joining us right now is AccuWeather flooding expert Alex is now asking, of course Alex,
00:05
if you're looking to get a lot of rain in Texas, this is certainly one of the patterns that you
00:10
and I've seen for many years be able to produce rainfall amounts that we're projecting right now.
00:18
Yeah, it's a slow moving upper low or a mid-level low, what we mean in the middle part of the
00:23
atmosphere, and what that represents is a puddle of chilly air. So when you get that puddle of
00:28
chilly air, you get the heating near the ground, drenching showers and thunderstorms bubble up in
00:33
that, and it's a very slow moving feature. So you can get day after day after day of these showers
00:39
and thunderstorms, and the result is what you see here, a tremendous amount of rainfall. This goes
00:45
right on through Sunday. We've already seen about an inch or two across a good chunk of those darker
00:49
shaded areas there, and more is coming. You can get one to two inches of rain an hour in some of these
00:55
more drenching thundershowers. That won't sit very well. The soil in much of this region here
01:00
is moist to saturated, so a lot of it's going to run off. Areas to the southwest of Austin and San
01:07
Antonio, as you and I were talking about on the air, off the air, is very hard panned, so the soil
01:13
moisture that is a matter, it just runs off whatever downpours you get. Alex, major rivers that are going
01:19
to be impacted in this area. Number one, that's my first question. Number two, you know, how bad can
01:29
the flooding be along these rivers? A lot of these streams and rivers are already elevated, so that's
01:34
a problem. So whatever rain we get, the rivers are already primed to rise quickly. We're looking at the
01:41
Brazos, the Trinity, the Sabine, Sulphur, I think even the mainstem of the red there, and you get farther
01:48
out to the northeast, too. Excuse my pronunciation of this if I get it wrong, the Bayou d'Orsay,
01:55
and also the Arkansas River over in Arkansas, because this extends over into Arkansas as well,
02:00
pretty much along the I-35 corridor just to the east a bit, and also segments of I-30 and I-20 in
02:06
this zone will be hit by the rain the hardest. Alex, also, you and I talked, we both have the
02:14
concern, and we may be adjusting this. Wouldn't be surprised if we brought that two- to four-inch
02:20
rain down toward the Texas coast as well. Yeah, what's been happening with this kind of a setup
02:26
is the thunderstorms erupt during the day over the interior, central interior southeastern Texas.
02:32
They go to town, and they start to wander then toward the coast at night, but instead of them
02:37
breaking down like we typically see with this moist flow coming off the gulf, they're able to survive
02:42
and move right on down to the coast, even down to the lower Rio Grande Valley, too. So some of this
02:48
rainfall here could be eclipsed from what we've been saying. So that means Houston, I mean, you can
02:54
get a torrential downpour, you get an inch or two of rain, and folks there know that when you get that
02:59
kind of rainfall in an hour's time, which is possible, it can certainly lead to some street
03:03
flooding. You were mentioning before that a lot of the rivers are already primed across central and
03:09
north Texas. The one area, and you know, we see this a lot in Texas, Dr. Joe Sobel, who you and I
03:16
worked with for decades, would always tell us that most droughts in Texas, most end in floods,
03:24
and this could be a situation like that. Although, when you look at the drought monitor, Alex,
03:30
and you mentioned this, most of the heavy rain looks like it falls out of the area that desperately
03:36
needs it the most. It does. And we've been nickel and diming, chipping away at a lot of this drought
03:41
area, which was much more extensive in the spring. And that whole concept of it takes a flood to break
03:49
a drought. The reason for that is it takes a strong weather system to snap the dry pattern. And this is
03:55
pretty much it. You will get some of that, though. I think we will chip away more and probably wipe out
04:00
some of that drought there southwest of Austin and San Antonio with this. But the soil there is very
04:06
hard pan, rocky. So a lot of that rain that falls is just going to immediately run off. That can lead
04:12
to flash flooding. Watch those dry washes, the low water crossings. They can be raging torrents in a
04:18
matter of minutes in a situation like this. All right. Accu with a flooding expert. Alex is now
04:23
so yeah, Alex, thanks again for joining us here.
Recommended
3:00
|
Up next
The impacts of river flooding
AccuWeather
4/15/2025
4:02
Rain, snowmelt bring flooding to Northeast
AccuWeather
3/5/2025
2:55
Life-threatening floods expected this week
AccuWeather
4/1/2025
0:47
Downpours drench wide swaths of Texas
AccuWeather
5/1/2021
1:55
Texas' 'Flash Flood Alley' at risk once again
AccuWeather
4/5/2022
1:42
Why 'Flash Flood Alley' formed in the heart of Texas
AccuWeather
4/6/2022
0:54
Flooding and hail hit Texas
AccuWeather
4/30/2025
0:34
Storms drench parts of Texas with welcome rain
AccuWeather
10/29/2022
2:16
Severe weather lingers as Texas remains under flash flood threat
AccuWeather
5/11/2023
3:55
46 million Americans face days of rain, raising flood concerns
AccuWeather
4/2/2025
0:16
Thunderstorms bring flooding to the streets of Houston
AccuWeather
11/28/2020
0:46
West Texas faces severe weather
AccuWeather
5/8/2025
2:01
Flash flooding and other threats for Southwest
AccuWeather
8/10/2022
3:52
Severe storms and flooding threat midweek
AccuWeather
3/31/2025
2:50
Life-threatening flooding risk from the South to Midwest
AccuWeather
4/1/2025
1:03
Rain returns to swaths of Texas
AccuWeather
6/29/2022
3:45
Rain and snow to elevate flood risk in California
AccuWeather
2/12/2025
1:33
Flash flooding pours off of Arizona's Vermilion Cliffs
AccuWeather
8/13/2022
5:52
Persisting river flooding in Midwest with more rain this week
AccuWeather
4/8/2025
3:43
Severe storms across Texas
AccuWeather
3/22/2022
3:44
Risk for flash flooding across parts of the Southeast
AccuWeather
8/10/2022
3:57
Tropical rainstorm to bring heavy rain to Texas
AccuWeather
6/18/2024
1:13
How I got into meteorology: Alex Sosnowski
AccuWeather
2/5/2024
0:27
Heavy rain triggers flash flooding in neighborhood
AccuWeather
5/18/2020
1:46
Conditions are prime for flooding across Arizona
AccuWeather
8/19/2022