Texas, Oklahoma among states at risk for flooding into next week
More rain is in the forecast for the southern Plains. While some areas in drought will benefit, others could face flooding as heavy rain falls on already saturated ground.
Wind-driven hail, torrential rain and flooding hit parts of Texas on April 29.
More rounds of rain through early May could trigger flooding across parts of the southern Plains already drenched by recent storms. Rainfall will also occur in some locations that need moisture due to ongoing drought, AccuWeather meteorologists say.
Parts of Oklahoma have picked up as much as 5 inches of rain since Monday, while 1-2 inches have fallen across portions of northern Texas through early Wednesday.
Short-term rain, flooding risk
As the first round of rain continues, up to a few inches of additional rain can fall across portions of north-central and northeastern Texas, southeastern Oklahoma, and parts of southwestern Arkansas and northeastern Louisiana.
Where inches of rain have already saturated the soil, the most significant risk of flash flooding is in low-lying areas and small streams as well as flooding on Red River tributaries.
While the rain is forecast to retreat to the southeast Thursday, another cluster of downpours and severe thunderstorms will drop southeastward across the southern Plains from Thursday night to Friday.
This batch of thunderstorms can bring rain to areas largely missed by downpours this week. However, more rain will fall on saturated soil in parts of Oklahoma and Texas, which can bring a new surge of high water to area streams and secondary rivers.
After a quiet weekend without downpours and thunderstorms, the atmosphere will reload farther west by early next week.
Long-term rain, flooding risk
"The troublemaker will be a large storm at the jet stream level of the atmosphere over the Southwest states," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Dombek said, "These upper-level storms are very challenging to be precise with several days in advance."
A lack of weather data from high levels in the atmosphere as opposed to the plethora of ground-level reporting sites issuing weather data may be a contributor. Weather balloons that carry instruments to measure temperature, humidity, wind and pressure help to fill some of that gap. That data is then fed into various computer models, which are state-of-the-art tools for meteorologists.
April 27, 2017: CIRES scientist Patrick Cullis releases a weather balloon carrying an ozonesonde from NOAA's Marshall Mesa on the 50th anniversary of the first ozonesonde launch from the research site near Boulder, Colorado, in 1967. (Image credit: Theo Stein/NOAA)
Based on the latest available information, AccuWeather meteorologists believe that a large storm at the jet stream level of the atmosphere will set up over the Southwest and tap moisture from the Gulf.
The result will be an uptick in showers and thunderstorms from Arizona to New Mexico, Colorado and the western portions of the southern Plains by early next week.
The downpours may linger over the same zone for days or progress eastward over the southern Plains. Should the moist zone stall, beneficial rain in drought areas of the High Plains may evolve into a flooding event.
If the moist corridor shifts farther east, it could bring another round of flooding rainfall to areas already hit hard by flooding this week.
Where rainfall from this week's events and next week's events overlap, cumulative totals could top 10 inches, which is the equivalent of two to three months' worth of rain in some locations.
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