Downpours May Bring Some Big Time Drought Relief to East Texas
The Extreme Drought Continues
Much of East Texas remains under either extreme or exceptional drought conditions.
Counties such as Angelina, Houston, Cherokee, and Nacogdoches are listed as being in extreme drought (bad), while Trinity, Polk, Tyler, Jasper, San Augustine, Sabine, and Shelby Counties are considered exceptional drought counties (worse).
About a week ago, some storms moved across the Pineywoods with portions of Angelina County getting the lion's share of the rain.
That widespread rainfall across the county allowed for the lifting of the burn ban for Angelina County. The burn bans for the rest of the counties across Deep East Texas, however, remain in place.
Help Is On The Way
Hopefully, numerous storms associated with a slow-moving cold front could bring some big-time relief to the drought that continues to plague the Pineywoods.
For the past several days, this cold front has been triggering a lot of rainfall across the eastern portions of Oklahoma. Slowly, those storms have been shifting southward into the ArkLaTex. Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued with some of these storms early Sunday morning.
The National Weather Service is expecting the cold front to continue southward which will heighten the rain chances across Deep East Texas over the next 24-48 hours. Many weather models are indicating at least an inch of rain will fall over much of the Pineywoods between now and Wednesday morning. Some models are showing isolated amounts of 5 inches or more.
How Bad Will These Storms Get?
There also exists the possibility of severe weather from some of the storms. The main threats from these severe storms will be large hail and damaging winds with gusts to 60 mph.
It looks like the best chances for the heaviest rainfall in the Lufkin/Nacogdoches area will be from Sunday afternoon until sunrise on Monday.
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