Heavy Rain Likely From The Southwest To Texas This Week

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5 Day Rain Forecast (Through Saturday Morning)

We’re watching the threat of heavy rain over the next few days for parts of the Southwest and Southern United States. Through Saturday morning, areas from eastern New Mexico through northern Texas and south along the Gulf Coast of Texas could see over four inches of rain. This heavy rain could lead to flooding concerns. Let’s break down the threats.

Early Week: Southwest Heavy Rain

As a upper level low slowly moves east over the next few days, it will interact with moist and unstable air, helping lead to storms across the Southwest today. While it slowly moves east during the day Tuesday, it will meet more moisture, some of it streaming out of the Gulf of Mexico, and lead to more heavy rain and flooding possibilities.

On Monday the best potential of flooding rains will be over parts of southern/southeast Utah into northwest Arizona, where rain rates could exceed flash flood guidance at times.

As mentioned above, as the heavy rain shifts east on Tuesday, so does the flooding threat, over a good portion of New Mexico, as well as extreme western Texas and southeast Arizona.

Mid/Late Week: Southern Plains Heavy Rain

Moisture Streaming North Later This Week

As mentioned above, moisture will be streaming north out of the Gulf of Mexico later this week ahead of that slow moving low. Last week we were watching the potential for something tropical to form in the Gulf of Mexico – the good news is that the odds are very low of anything gathering strength like that. However, even without the threat of a tropical system, we still are expecting the influx of deep moisture into the region. The amount of moisture in the atmosphere could measure over 2″ as we head toward Thursday and Friday across portions of the Gulf Coast of Texas. That helps lead to the potential of heavy rain here as well, and areas could see potentially 3-4″+ of rain by the time the weekend begins – with rain gradually tapering through the weekend in these areas.

The rain the next few days will help cities already saturated this year in parts of the south continue to rise in the rankings. It’s possible that Amarillo could be in the top five for wettest year on record by the end of the week. However, a good part of the south has been fairly dry since the soakings they saw toward the end of spring and beginning of summer, and have fallen back into a drought situation.

(CHECK OUT YOUR FORECAST: wx.aerisweather.com)

– Meteorologist D.J. Kayser