Why Texas Has More to Fear than the Rain

As a child, I used to travel to Texas every summer to visit some of my relatives. Every time I showed up for a week or more, there were certain conditions there that were consistent from year to year. There was always an abundance of mosquitoes, and despite experiencing rain in the middle of the ‘dry’ season every time I showed up, there was always a drought (strange right?).
Well, it looks like Texas has solved one of those problems, albeit in the worst possible way. Over the past week, the state has been drenched in rain to the tune of 37.2 trillion gallons. That’s enough to cover the entire state in 8 inches of rain, most of which has fallen in the past few days. The soil throughout Texas is totally soaked, which means that even the smallest of rains could cause flooding.
Not that they haven’t had plenty of that already. As of writing this, 24 people have died due to flooding, hundreds have had to be rescued, and 11 more are still missing. Flash floods are stranding drivers and rising waters have washed away homes. While minor streams are overflowing and low lying areas are quickly being submerged, larger waterways such as the Trinity River that runs through Dallas, have risen to their highest levels since 1989. By all accounts this is an abnormal event, even for the flood prone region.

This post was published at The Daily Sheeple on June 6th, 2015.