MAY 28, 2015
Suffering its wettest month on record, many parts of Texas
are still recovering from the most recent severe storms and flooding. To date,
Houston’s Hobby airport recorded 12.34 inches of rainfall while Sugar Land,
located just outside Houston, recorded 17.79 inches of rain establishing a
record for the wettest May on record.
Catastrophe modeling firm, AIR Worldwide, noted the rains
ended five years of extreme drought in some areas of the state.
The Memorial Day storm that occurred Monday evening into
Tuesday morning was the latest storm to lash areas of the state with hail,
tornadoes and flash flooding.
According to AIR, a slow-moving low-pressure system traveled
across Texas, producing thunderstorms and heavy rains in the western Houston
metro area.
Within a few hours Monday evening, six to eight inches of rain had
fallen across the area from these mesoscale convective systems. The torrential
rains was attributed to a large feed of low-level moisture pushing into the
region from the Gulf of Mexico, combined with the slow movement of the storm
system.
“Training echoes”—successive downpours that occur over the same area
due to slow storm movement in the same direction as the storm’s axis of
orientation—broke out across the region.
Flood levels in many parts of the region have exceeded
record levels. Several bayous have broken their banks.
The Bianco River, which reaches flood stage at 13 feet, rose
26 feet within an hour and crested at more than 40 feet. The Trinity River in
Dallas rose above its 30-foot flood stage to more than 40 feet on Sunday night
as continued rainfall prompted the National Weather Service to extend flood
advisories along the river until Thursday or Friday.
With some major freeways blocked by flooding and hundreds of
vehicles submerged or abandoned, travel was discouraged. More than 80,000
people lost power in the Houston area, and hundreds of homes were flooded. West
of Houston in Wimberley, one of the worst affected areas, more than 350 homes
along the Blanco River were washed away by flash floods. A search is ongoing
for several people who were swept away by the flood waters in Wimberley, the
ICT said in a statement issued Wednesday.
Houston’s roadways and many of its neighborhoods have also
been flooded. According to the ICT, Wichita Falls recorded over 14 inches of
rain making the month of May its wettest month ever according to records dating
back to 1897. The city’s Wichita River crested on May 24 Corpus Christi also
recorded the wettest May with rains totaling 13.41 to date. The previous record
was 9.21 inches set in 1941.
Austin reported the wettest April (19.82) and May (16.72)
ever recorded with rainfall for both months totaling 36.54 inches, the ICT
said. Only one other month, September 1921, had more rainfall recorded with
20.78 inches. The city’s Shoal Creek crested on Memorial Day flooding downtown
businesses.
Insurers are beginning to see claims as result of the
flooding.
“Our CAT Teams will remain throughout the region until all
claims are reported and resolved,” said Bob Miller, GEICO’s regional vice
president of Texas operations. “Our policyholders are facing severe conditions
and losses.”
Farmers Insurance has sent catastrophe adjusters to provide
assistance to customers in the areas impacted by the storms, according to Rod
Harden, head of catastrophe claims for Farmers Insurance. The company expects
more than 13,000 claims across seven impacted states including Colorado, Iowa,
Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas. Insured damages stemming
from these series of storms are likely to total nearly $105 million.
Source: claimsjournal.com
