Texas residents along the Gulf Coast were warned Tuesday that life-threatening flooding is possible this week, as the National Hurricane Center (NHC) designated a sprawling rainstorm over South Texas as Potential Tropical Cyclone One and issued tropical storm watches for parts of the upper Texas and southwestern Louisiana coasts.
After days of heavy downpours had already soaked rivers, roads and neighbourhoods from Corpus Christi to Houston, with flash flooding on Sunday night forcing the closure of Interstate 35 in both directions in Waco. Forecasters now fear that a slow-moving tropical disturbance, currently just inland along the south Texas coast, could briefly move over the Gulf of Mexico, strengthen into a tropical storm and then sweep back across the same sodden ground later this week. Some areas could see more than 10 inches of additional rain on top of what has already fallen.
