Floods Threaten Texas and Louisiana This Week
Louisiana and Texas, including Houston, will get hit with flooding rains for the next few days as a potential tropical storm tries to spin up across the western Gulf.
There is a moderate level 3 risk of heavy rainfall across coastal Texas for the next three days, the US Weather Prediction Center said. Flood warnings and watches span central and eastern Texas to Mississippi, with up to 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain forecast, the National Weather Service said.
“A very impressive setup for flash flooding will begin to unfold along the Gulf Coast of Texas today,” Joe Wegman, a forecaster at the US Weather Prediction Center, wrote in an analysis. “The impressive ingredient is the sheer amount of moisture.”
Houston, the fourth most populous US city and home to many refineries and gas processing facilities, is vulnerable to flooding, with Hurricane Harvey triggering devastating impacts in 2017. The flooding rains may drench spectators on their way to Wednesday’s match between Portugal and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Houston.
Along the coast, the moisture is flowing in from a disorganized patch of thunderstorms that may generate the Atlantic hurricane season’s first named storm, the US National Hurricane Center said. The system currently has a 30% chance of becoming Tropical Storm Arthur in the next week.
Elsewhere, as the World Cup group stages continue, there are heat advisories across parts of California, Oregon, Nevada and Washington.
HIGH AND LOWS:
US high temperature for Sunday, June 14: 117F at Death Valley, CA
US low temperature for Sunday, June 14: 23F at 13 miles north of White Sulphur Springs, MT and at 32 miles west-southwest of Bynum, MT
Canada high temperature as of 5 a.m. EDT on Monday: 81F Lillooet, BC
Canada low temperature as of 5 a.m. EDT on Monday: 23.2F Mould Bay, NT
Mexico high temperatures on Monday: 40-45C (104-113F) in Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua and north Sinaloa.
Photo: Residents in a neighborhood near the Barker Reservoir return to their homes to collect belongings Aug. 31, 2017. Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images