What you’re looking at is the water level for Lake Travis just west of Austin over the past two and a half years. What is more impressive than the spike you see in the past week is the amount of rain that has fallen over the entire state.
There has been so much precipitation in Texas that it could have covered ALL OF IT in 8” of water. From El Paso to Texarkana, and Dalhart to Del Rio. Every acre, every yard, every pasture. EIGHT GODDAMN INCHES. “But Pat,” you announce, “that was all last week! It’s over! Chill out!” Oh really?!?! Here a radar image of pretty much right the hell now:
Yup. It’s still raining. Not as bad as before, but still raining. But why?
A few weeks ago, the jet stream dipped down and turned north over Mexico and over an area just west of Austin. This drove a huge amount of moisture from the Gulf over central Texas. Compounded with a couple of fronts moving down, and we have INSTA-BIBLICAL FLOODS!! Woooohooo!
While it did, in fact, dump mostly late last week and Monday night/Tuesday morning, Texas is quite large, so it takes a while for all that agua to make it down stream. In my area (Fort Bend County, just SW of Houston), there are now mandatory evacuations in the town of Rosenberg due to the expected record flooding of the Brazos River. LITERALLY five miles from my house, another subdivision is being threatened by the rising waters. Here’s a couple of pics from yesterday when I drove over the Brazos right beside said subdivision:
Do you see the little lip of shoreline in that first pic? That’s normally a 40’ cliff. No, I’m not exaggerating.
The thing is, we aren’t all flooded out of our houses. I didn’t have to drive down a street-turned-river to get to work, but many were caught in that position. A lot of cars were lost by rising waters, not by driving into the water. A lot of houses have been flooded a little bit, some were completely wiped away (outside of Austin).
So why am I telling you this? Because this sucks. That’s why. Almost as badly as the drought did.
Oh look! It’s storming outside of my house again. I guess I won’t be grilling...