Weather Service – Texas at Risk for Excessive Rainfall Monday

When you think of the Texas landscape you probably picture the beautiful wildflowers of the Texas Hill Country. Or maybe you're more of a mind to think of far west Texas and a more unforgiving landscape. Or perhaps your mind's eye sees the Piney Woods when you think of Texas.

Well, one thing is for sure, no matter what picture you have of yourself in Texas today, you better envision having an umbrella. And in some Texas counties, you might want to have a boat. There is rain happening and more rain coming. The threat of flooding rains runs from El Paso in the west to Orange in the east, Amarillo to the north, and almost to Brownsville in the south.

The Weather Prediction Center, the arm of the National Weather Service that focuses on precipitation events says most of Texas is in line for a good "gullywashing". What we mean by that is over the next several days a large portion of the state is at either a marginal or slight risk for an excessive rainfall event. Here's the outlook for today.

In that graphic, you can see that extreme western Texas has a better shot at heavier showers than the eastern nine-tenths of the state does. By the way, an excessive rainfall event is characterized by rainfall rates that exceed the ability of an area to drain. In some Texas communities drainage can handle several inches of rain per hour, while in others a deluge of a quarter of an inch of rainfall in a short period of time can cause problems on the roadway.

The WPC says a larger portion of Texas will be at risk for heavy downpours on Tuesday. Here's the way that graphic looks.

As you can see, forecasters have indicated via the giant yellow plume that they believe the heaviest rain will fall across Texas on Tuesday. Don't expect things to improve that much by Wednesday but hopefully toward the end of the week the heavy downpours will not be so numerous.

But on the bright side, with all the clouds and rain, Texas doesn't have any heat advisories today. At least not yet. And since you'll be spending some time inside, how about some screen time?