October 16, 2007
1415z
THIS FORECAST was nine hours ago, things have changed a bit with sunrise.
National Weather ServiceTropical Weather Outlook and Summary
TROPICAL WEATHER OUTLOOK
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
530 AM EDT TUE OCT 16 2007
FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC...CARIBBEAN SEA AND THE GULF OF MEXICO...
A WEAK AREA OF LOW PRESSURE OVER THE SOUTHWESTERN GULF OF MEXICO IS
ACCOMPANIED BY SOME DISORGANIZED SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS.
UPPER-LEVEL WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO BECOME INCREASINGLY UNFAVORABLE
FOR DEVELOPMENT OF THIS SYSTEM OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS AS IT
MOVES NORTHWESTWARD TO NORTHWARD.
TROPICAL CYCLONE FORMATION IS NOT EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 48 HOURS.
FORECASTER PASCH
October 13, 2007
1330z
UNISYS Water Vapor Satellite north and west hemisphere
Rains pound North Texas, trigger flooding, fatal accident (click here)
Storms cause fatal accident, flooding in Dallas, Collin counties
12:00 AM CDT on Tuesday, October 16, 2007
By MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News
myoung@dallasnews.com
Strong thunderstorms Monday dumped more than 5 inches of rain on parts of North Texas, snarling morning commuter traffic, causing at least one fatal accident and triggering widespread flooding across Dallas and Collin counties.
"Plano is under water," Plano Fire Capt. Mark Vice said Monday as his crews scrambled to answer 30 high-water rescue calls from trapped motorists or those who had abandoned their cars in the flooding.
Tumbling water turned suburban streets into mountain creeks and left the creeks roaring like rivers. In Carrollton, Plano and parts of North Dallas, drivers dealt delicately with water high enough to lap at the bottom of their cars and puddles broad enough to cover six-lane roads.
The heavy clouds pushing ahead of a cold front also capped the region's unseasonably warm weather, for a day at least, holding high temperatures in the mid-70s, the lowest in five months....
...The broad band of storms that swooped across North Texas early Monday and lingered into the early afternoon was the second round of rough weather in less than 24 hours.
"We had a lot of moisture, a lot of warm air from the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, enough to set off the storms we saw Sunday night," Ms. Dunn said. "And in the morning, a squall line developed just ahead of a cold front in Oklahoma, and it redeveloped in central and north central Texas."
Rainfall from the first batch of storms was widely scattered. But the line of storms that blew through Monday dumped heavy rains across a broad swath of North Texas, from an inch or so in some areas, to about 2 inches at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and more than 5 inches in portions of northern Dallas and southwestern Collin counties.
"The storms moved fast," Ms. Dunn said, "which was good. Otherwise, we would have had even more flooding problems."
Heavy rains pushed the Elm Fork of the Trinity River to flood stage in Carrollton, along with White Rock Creek, and forecasters expected the Trinity to reach the flood stage in downtown Dallas on Monday night.
But it was on area streets where the sudden rush of water caused widespread problems.
Mud poured from a construction site at Legacy Drive and State Highway 121 in Plano, snarling morning traffic there. High winds knocked over construction signs in Grand Prairie and downed power lines in Dallas.
About 20,000 electric customers were without power about 10 a.m. Monday, according to Oncor Electric Delivery, but that number was down to about 5,000 by mid-afternoon, scattered across the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Police said heavy rain contributed to a fatal accident Monday morning in which a Denton man lost control of his car and slid sideways into the path of an 18-wheeler.
Denton police spokesman Jim Bryan said the driver, who had not been identified late Monday, was traveling north on Fort Worth Drive when his car skidded into oncoming traffic.
"Preliminary investigation shows he was probably driving too fast for the weather conditions and did not have good tires," the spokesman said.
In Farmersville, a pickup hydroplaned on rain-soaked U.S. Highway 380 and slid into the back of a school bus carrying 20 students, police said. The crash pushed the bus into a roadside ditch and onto its side.
Farmersville school officials said the students and bus driver suffered minor injuries. The driver of the truck wasn't hurt, police said.
The storms pushed through Dallas just as Southwest Airlines introduced its new boarding system for passengers, causing a crush of weather-related delays.
"Other than the weather, the new boarding process is going as we had hoped," said Beth Harbin, a Southwest spokeswoman.
The morning thunderstorms caused airlines to cancel about 110 flights out of 950 at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. By the afternoon, airport officials said schedules were getting back to normal with delays easing from 90 minutes to about 30 minutes.
At Dallas Love Field, Southwest Airlines canceled 13 flights before 9 a.m. and was experiencing delays of up to two hours by the afternoon as it worked to get back on schedule.
Staff writers Theodore Kim and Suzanne Marta, and Donna Fielder of the Denton Record-Chronicle contributed to this report.
