Severe thunderstorms, heavy rain threaten US as March weather turns extreme
The Pacific Northwest is staring down a rare spring severe thunderstorm threat and Texas is preparing to see up to half a year’s worth of rain by the weekend as March continues its streak of unusually disruptive weather.
The heavy rain will become widespread Wednesday night and continue into Thursday. Rainfall rates could reach 2 to 3 inches per hour at times and send totals skyrocketing.
The gushing rainfall will bring some drought relief to the bone-dry region, but it will come at a price: flash flooding.
“Unfortunately this setup looks good enough to be a case where it’s beneficial rain initially, but then quickly overwhelms even the dry soil conditions,” the Weather Prediction Center warned.
A level 3 of 4 risk of flooding rain is in place Wednesday in South Texas – including Corpus Christi – and the same risk level is in place Thursday from Corpus Christi to just south of Houston along the state’s Gulf coast, according to the center.
Double-digit rainfall totals are likely and some of the hardest-hit areas could record more than a foot. These totals are quite rare for the state outside of hurricane season, which runs from June through November, and could be up to five times March averages.
Rainfall totals of 8 to 10 inches are likely in Corpus Christi from late Wednesday through Friday, but could approach 15 inches if the city is trapped under the heaviest rain. Corpus Christi has never had 8 inches or more of rain from a storm before June, according to a CNN analysis of NOAA data.
On average, just over 2 inches of rain fall in Corpus Christi in March, with about 30 inches over an entire year. That means the city could record half its annual rainfall in about 72 hours in the worst-case scenario.
South Texas will see some of these showers linger through Friday before the weekend largely dries out.
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