Good morning everyone. While the greater Houston area has continued to be relatively spared by what is left of Imelda the same cannot be said for our neighbors in the Golden Triangle area. Rainfall yesterday and through the night last night has led to a catastrophic flooding situation in that area, causing the National Weather Service to issue a rare Flash Flood Emergency warning. Right now we are looking at rainfall estimates possibly approaching 30 inches in spots over the past 48 hours in the Beaumont/Port Arthur area. I-10 is closed in the Winnie area and I have seen a number of reports of water entering homes and structures in Beaumont. Please keep these people in your thoughts.
Unfortunately the rain looks to continue for at least the next few hours before hopefully beginning to taper off for them. While I cringe saying this it is not out of the question that this approaches Harvey type impacts for that area.
In addition to the problems going on to our east, a band of very intense rain has flared to our north around the Conroe area. Earlier this morning the airport in Conroe reported an absolutely absurd 5 inches of rain in one hour. Again, these are rainfall rates approaching what Harvey did, however hopefully they will not last as long.
I expect the band currently affecting our northern suburbs to begin sagging or building south into the Houston metro area through this morning and possibly into the early afternoon. Right now it appears as though this band will lose some intensity as it pushes south sparing Houston from the worst. The one computer model that has been performing the best thus far (called the HRRR or High Resolution Rapid Refresh) has been showing this all night so I am fairly confident in that solution.
With that said, these tropical air masses are nothing to be trifled with and as we saw yesterday evening, even a quick flare up can cause some issues. While I believe right now Houston should come out of this alright, please do not let your guard down until later tonight, we have seen what this storm is capable of.
