Flooding threats continue in southern US

AccuWeather

AccuWeather Flooding Expert Alex Sosnowski discusses the river levels and flooding situation in eastern Texas.

Transcript

00:00 All of this rain comes as recovery efforts continue as residents deal with heavy flooding in Texas.

00:06 This was captured near Houston. It was a little over a week ago.

00:10 Joining me right now, Accuweather flood expert Alex Cisnowski.

00:14 You know, Alex, as high as those rivers were between Dallas and Houston, two of the biggest

00:20 ones, the Trinity and the San Jacinto Rivers, a lot of those rivers have come down pretty

00:25 quickly here over the last week.

00:28 Yeah, they have come down because you've gotten a break from some of the persistent torrential

00:33 rain that's been bombarding the area really since April. But there's more rain coming.

00:38 And if you live along a river anywhere from northeastern Texas all the way over to Mississippi,

00:45 Alabama, Georgia, even along the I-10, I-20 corridors, you got to watch the rivers, I think,

00:51 for the next seven to 10 days because this pattern isn't done yet.

00:55 You know, Alex, you and I were talking last week and we saw that there was another opportunity

00:59 for heavy rain as we went for this past weekend and in the early part of the week.

01:03 Take a look at the last 48 hours. You know, some good news for that area between Dallas

01:08 and Houston. There was some heavy rain, but as you talked about, you didn't think it was

01:12 going to be widespread in that area.

01:14 Right. And the thing to focus on, too, and we'll get more into this here in a bit,

01:20 watch that rain there budding in Louisiana and Mississippi. That could be a potential

01:25 trouble spot moving forward. But to answer your question, I think the thunderstorms that

01:31 you're going to get in northeast Texas, north of Houston and south of Dallas this afternoon

01:36 into this evening are going to tend to be spotty. There's a concentration you got to

01:40 watch, though, from Houston over to Lake Charles this afternoon into this evening.

01:45 That could get very active. We could have some flash flooding problems there

01:50 during the afternoon and evening hours. And then as we get into the latter half of this

01:54 week, there's round number two. I want to show you future rainfall here. There's that

01:58 area from Houston on south later today. And then watch what happens out tools. We'll

02:03 stop it here. And then there's that next round. That's where it gets a little dicey as we

02:09 get into Thursday into Friday. And once again, though, you see the heavier rain also across

02:14 Louisiana and Mississippi.

02:17 Yeah. So you get the overlap there. And it's where these rainfall events overlap is where

02:22 you're going to have your most significant risks of significant rises on the rivers again.

02:27 And northeastern Texas is in that between Dallas and Houston. They're back in the game

02:33 again, unfortunately. But then also areas farther to the east there between I-10 and

02:38 I-20 in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And you can take that probably all the way

02:43 off to the Georgia coast to in northern Florida is in that ballgame to the panhandle part.

02:49 So there's flash flooding risk in there. There's small stream by you flooding risk with

02:54 this and also secondary river flooding. There is a surge coming down the Mississippi from

02:59 the rain that they've had up north. But I think the local effects of this rain on the

03:04 Mississippi there will be minimal. It's more the secondary rivers surrounding the

03:08 Mississippi here. That could be a problem moving forward here. And there's there's

03:13 additional rain coming in pretty much into the end of the month, maybe more separation

03:17 in between the two. So it may become more localized there.

03:20 Alex, before I let you go, I want to take you out to Vicksburg, Mississippi, and just

03:24 your impressions of the Mississippi. I mean, if anything, and you mentioned this, if anything,

03:30 no water, low water levels in the short term. If anything, you have to be worried about

03:34 the opposite, correct?

03:35 Yeah, I think moving forward here in the next couple of months, if we continue to get these

03:40 rounds of heavy thunderstorms across the Midwest, the upper Midwest, the Missouri Basin,

03:46 and even closer down into the Arkansas Basin, the Tennessee Basin, this will all tend to

03:51 feed in. So I think we're going to have more issues here with some some low, low grade

03:56 flooding to moderate flooding, perhaps on the Mississippi moving forward. And that higher

04:01 water, higher flows can also cause some problems for barge traffic, too.

04:05 All right. AccuWeather flood expert Alex Sosnowski. Alex, thanks again for joining us.

04:10 My pleasure.

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