UPDATE 7/6: Arturo reports that to the north of Monterrey not far from the Texas border, Venustiano Carranza Dam located in Northern Coahuila may not hold and 18,000 residents have been evacuated from Nuevo Leon, Anahuac. Local newspaper sites http://www.elporvenir.com.mx/ and http://www.telediario.mx/ are not accessible from the U.S. today, but the front page of ElNorte.com confirms the story. Even the U.S. radars have picked up on some of the tremendous rainfall in this area:

UPDATE 7/3: Arturo has uploaded an album of photos to Facebook and offers these final thoughts:

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UPDATE 7/2 3 PM:El Porvenir (en Espanol) says 6 people have been killed and thousands are homeless. Reuters says 30 inches of rain has fallen. Arturo has uploaded additional photos from ElNorte.com and says:

UPDATE 7/2 8 AM: Here is some additional information from Arturo that we published in a news story about the flooding in Mexico. He has also posted a link to this page of official daily and monthly rainfall totals PDF (archived). The max listed there is 17.55 inches but the rain spanned more than one day in some cases so true storm-total amounts are in-between the day and month values.

UPDATE: Arturo has posted an excellent link to a slideshow of photos showing the river flooding in Monterrey. He also writes:

One of our AccuWeather.com Facebook Fans, Arturo Salinas, is reporting on the flooding caused by Hurricane Alex in Monterrey, Mexico today. We're glad because information is very hard to obtain about the conditions there. Besides the language barrier which complicates reading local news, the Mexican government doesn't have a radar rainfall estimate or real-time network of rain gauges or river gauges like we do in the U.S. In the photo below, a civil defense / traffic sign warned local residents of the danger yesterday, as did AccuWeather.com, predicting "up to 20 inches" of rainfall could fall in the area.

Arturo uploaded this photo from a local newspaper ElNorte.com showing the flooding today and also a similar photo from Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. Indeed another local paper says "similar a El Gilberto" and that 20,000 have been evacuated.

Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 was a much stronger storm, making landfall as a Category 5, but in the case of flooding, Tropical Storms have been known to drop over 40 inches of rain even over flat areas and Monterrey is backed up against the mountains with the (normally dry) Santa Catarina River flowing through it. As air flows up the mountains, it becomes more moist and causes heavy rains and flash flooding like you are seeing in Arturo's pictures. Gilbert dropped nearly 14 inches of rain in the area:

Our current rainfall forecast indicates more than 8 inches could still fall. There is an unofficial report of 14 inches in Mexico, and U.S. NWS maps indicated over 10 inches of rain had fallen in southern Texas but the maps do not cover the Monterrey area which is outside of the Brownsville NEXRAD radar coverage. Here's a list of rainfall amounts as of 8 AM from our Twitter feed:

Monterrey, Mexico 7.6"
Soto La Marina 6.7"
Brownsville, Texas: 6.8"
McAllen, Texas 7.6"

This video shows what Hurricane Alex did on the coast:

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/9525098001?isVid=1

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