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Tropical Storm Alberto forms in Gulf | Tropical rainfall for Central Texas Wednesday evening
While the rainfall totals have trended down for Central Texas, we’re still expecting up to 4 inches of rain in spots with a minor flood risk.
AUSTIN, Texas — Tropical Storm Alberto formed in the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday morning, making it the first named system of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. Although the center of Alberto will make landfall more than 600 miles south of Austin, the outer most tropical rain bands have reached Central Texas, and will continue to bring rainfall through Wednesday evening.
Through most of Wednesday afternoon the rain was fairly light, but heavier tropical rain bands will bring pockets of steadier rain through the late evening on Wednesday. Overall the flood risk is low for Central Texas, but there could be some isolated flooding, especially over Fayette, Bastrop, and Lee counties.
In addition to the minor flood risk, there is also a low risk for a spin-up tropical tornado. The risk is quite low, but you always have to keep an eye out for this with these type of land falling tropical system.
The rain will shift westward through the late evening into the overnight, bringing widespread totals of a quarter inch to one inch. There will be some pockets from Austin points each that receive 1 to 4 inches of rainfall.
There will be a lull late overnight into Thursday morning, but then a few scattered tropical downpours will develop Thursday afternoon and evening. This activity will be hit or miss, but where the downpours form there could be locally heavy rain. The overall rain chance on Thursday is about 50 percent.
The bottom line for Central Texas
Although this system will not be as impactful as appeared possible a few days ago, we still have tropical rain in the forecast on through Wednesday evening and Thursday that could create minor flooding. In addition to the flood risk, the Storm Prediction Center has added a low-end tornado risk for areas southeast of Austin.
Make sure you are keeping up with the forecast and have a reliable way to get alerts such as the KVUE app.
The KVUE Weather Team will continue to closely monitor this developing forecast.
In the meantime, the extended forecast can be found below:
