Good Saturday evening bloggers,
Hopefully, you are having a good 4th of July weekend. Sadly, it is not a good 4th of July in south Texas as a major flood disaster has occurred and is still going on.
10"-20" of rain has occurred down there the last 2-3 days and most fell in a 10 hour period Thursday night into Friday. The water all funneled into the Guadalupe river creating a flash flood. 32 people have been killed and there are around 25 more girls missing as of 5 PM Saturday. So, terrible.
There are 3 main reasons this occurred.
1. The obvious is the amount of rain in a short amount of time. We average 39" of rain in a year. So, this is like getting almost 1/2 of our annual rainfall in 2 days and it occurring over most of eastern Kansas and western Missouri.
2. This is partially due to the remnants of what was a weak and short-lived tropical storm Barry that made landfall around Tampico, Mexico on June 30th. It did cause major flooding down there. Then, the remnants tracked north into south Texas, stalled and combined with the monsoon moisture and you get a major flood event.
3. And this may be the most odd. As of the July 1st Drought Monitor, these locations were in a level 5 of 5 drought, also known as an Exceptional drought. The dry ground may not have been able to absorb as much rain as it would have had it not been so dry. But, had this been a 3"-5" rain event this disaster would not have happened. This means reason #1 is the main reason.
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Now, we have locations, mostly along and south of I-70 in KC that could really use rain. There is a chance tonight.
I have more on the Texas flood disaster and our interesting summer weather pattern in the four and a half minute video below.
Have a great rest of your holiday weekend.
Stay safe, stay healthy
