Flooding, 'hundred year' storm prompts disaster declarations in South Texas

Update at 7:20 p.m.: In rural Willacy County, officials are contending with an unexpected consequence of the heavy deluge — flood waters that are flowing the wrong way and continuing to rise.

“There’s a whole bunch of water crossing the highway on the west side of the community that’s coming from Cameron (County),” Willacy County Judge Aurelio “Keter” Guerra told mySA late Friday.

Guerra was referring to flood waters flowing east-to-west just outside the small rural town of Sebastian along U.S. Highway 77, rather than west-to-east toward the Laguna Madre.

The Rio Grande Valley is largely flat, with elevations that drop an average of one inch per mile over the 100 or so miles between Starr County along the U.S.-Mexico border, to the coastal areas of Willacy and Cameron counties.

The flood flows concerning Guerra on Friday are occurring outside a levy drainage system maintained by the International Boundary and Water Commission that typically funnels water from the west to outfalls at the coast.

Currently, the levies and other interconnected drainage canals are filled to the brim.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we have more water coming up again in the community and that will trigger even more damage,” Guerra said, saying it’s the most water he’s ever seen. 

Update at 2:35 p.m.: Storm waters are slowly beginning to recede after devastating flooding doused the Rio Grande Valley; however, Raul Sesin, general manager of Hidalgo County Drainage District No. 1, referred to this week’s rains as a “hundred year” storm during a news conference in Weslaco.

The drainage district manages the largest network of drainage canals in the county, serving nearly 900,000 residents.

As the Valley turns from exigent disaster response, to disaster recovery, officials are already beginning to make local declarations of disaster.

The cities of Edinburg, Alamo and Weslaco were among the first to make the disaster declarations calling on Texas Governor Greg Abbott to issue one of his own.

“This extreme weather event has placed a tremendous strain on our community, and our top priority is ensuring the safety of our residents,” said Edinburg Mayor Ramiro Garza Jr. just two days after undergoing surgery related to a recent prostate cancer diagnosis.

Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez and Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Jr. each issued countywide states of disaster Friday. Doing so becomes an automatic plea to the governor’s office. Should Abbott issue a disaster declaration, it will open up avenues of disaster relief funding to help in the Valley’s recovery efforts. 

Original story below: 

A nearly inconceivable amount of rain pummeled the Rio Grande Valley Thursday, March 27, causing widespread and catastrophic flooding, scores of cars stranded on the roads, and a number of emergency high water rescues.

All four counties were impacted by the storms, which had originally been forecast to drop just a few inches of rain over the area via scattered lines of thunderstorms.

Instead, wide swaths of the Valley were pounded by harsh thunderstorm after thunderstorm in what meteorologists referred to as “training” rain for the way the lines of storms pushed through not unlike a train on railroad tracks.

“It was a really historical event for the Rio Grande Valley just given the intense amount of rainfall we received with anything from 13-21 inches of rain,” Bianca Garcia, a lead meteorologist with the National Weather Service-Brownsville, told mySA Friday morning.

While nearly every city in the Valley — from out west in Rio Grande City to along the coast at South Padre Island — received around 10 inches of rain, the hardest hit was Harlingen.

It was there at the Valley International Airport where the NWS-Brownsville’s official weather gauges recorded 18.7 inches of rain before a lightning strike took out the instruments.

But a citizen observer — known as a CoCoRaHS, or Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network observer — who lives near the airport continued to gather data that appeared to confirm radar-estimated rainfall totals in excess of 21 inches, Garcia said.

As for early reports that a tornado may have touched down in the area, meteorologists are still in the process of trying to confirm via on-the-ground information gathering.

One report from officers with the La Feria Police Department near the Hidalgo County/Cameron County line indicated that a funnel cloud may have briefly touched down there.

Meanwhile, a dozen miles to the north, residents in the Edcouch and Elsa communities have reported a tornado may have struck there. The Delta community had been under a radar-indicated tornado warning Thursday evening.

But Garcia stressed that efforts to confirm a tornado touchdown may take some time, as city and county officials prioritize continued flood response.

Meanwhile, as the flood waters begin receding into the Laguna Madre, some of the Valley’s watersheds are seeing historic cresting.

That includes the Arroyo Colorado, a mostly shallow and placid creek running through the heart of Cameron and Willacy counties that serves as a natural avenue for storm runoff.

Thursday’s rains have brought historic flows to the Arroyo Colorado, which — as of about lunchtime — was reported to be at 30.44 feet and rising, Garcia said.

That flood stage is more than six feet higher than the highest crest previously recorded in July 2010 in the aftermath of Hurricane Alex.

A number of school districts and colleges announced closures Friday, including the University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley, South Texas College, Texas A&M University Higher Education Center, Edinburg CISD, Brownsville ISD, Harlingen CISD among others. 

Thursday’s rains also shattered records set by previous non-tropical storms whose damage had gone on to earn them official monikers by the NWS, such as the Great June Flood of 2018 in the RGV.

More than a dozen inches of rain fell across many regions of the Valley during that three-day-long event, with isolated pockets of up to 18 inches of rain falling in Weslaco and Mercedes.

Thursday’s storms, however, dumped just as much — if not more — rain in just 24 hours.

The 2018 storms, and a nearly identical weather system nearly a year to the day later, ultimately led to disaster declarations from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Local officials are already calling for similar declarations to be made in the aftermath of this week’s deluge.

“This weather event has significantly impacted our city and surrounding areas. As a result, Weslaco has submitted an emergency declaration to the Governor’s Office for assistance,” Weslaco officials stated on Facebook.

Isolated showers were expected to eventually dissipate Friday afternoon.