According to a report from MSN, Streets and highways around Dallas remained waterlogged Monday afternoon after flash floods struck the Dallas-Fort Worth area overnight, leaving at least one person dead. Signs of flooding lingered even after the rain mostly cleared from the metroplex.
In Mesquite, southeast of Dallas, a body was recovered Monday afternoon from a vehicle in a creek. Elsewhere, authorities conducted water rescues and evacuated residents from flooded areas; cars remained abandoned, some parked on the sides of interstates, either flooded or damaged in crashes; numerous highway ramps and lanes were shut down. At the interchange of Interstates 30, 45, and 75 — a trouble spot on good days — flooding had traffic down to a trickle in one lane.
In some isolated areas, the rainfall totals would be considered a 1-in-1,000-year flood — a remarkable reversal given the dramatic drought that Dallas had faced for months. Several rainfall gauges recorded more than 10 inches. A record-breaking 3.01 inches of rain was recorded in one hour at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
The downpour marked the latest such flood in the past few weeks across the United States. In one week alone, three 1-in-1,000-year rain events occurred, inundating St. Louis, eastern Kentucky, and southeastern Illinois. The term, often considered controversial in part because it’s misunderstood, is used to describe a rainfall event that is expected once every 1,000 years, meaning it has just a 0.1 percent chance of happening in any given year — but such events can occur much more frequently.
The Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex was overtaken by a slow-moving thunderstorm late Sunday night into Monday, resulting in a rain event that established the area’s highest 24-hour precipitation total in nearly 90 years, leaving one dead and prompting a barrage of flash flooding and subsequent water rescues.
Throughout the day on Monday, the city was all but brought to a standstill as officials urged motorists to stay off the roads and carried out rescues of those whose vehicles were caught in the floodwaters. Monday evening, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins reported that a 60-year-old woman was killed when her vehicle was swept away in the flooding. Meanwhile, tens of thousands were without power for a time on Monday and air travel at local airports was disrupted.
The heavy rain began under the dark of night on Sunday. Flash flood warnings issued in parts of Dallas late Sunday quickly gave way to nearly 10 inches of rain in a short period near the downtown area, creating submerged roadways and forcing water rescues throughout the area.
Rainfall continued well into Monday, with the total 24-hour rainfall of 9.19 inches as of 2 p.m. local time noted as the second-highest total ever and the most since September 1932, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
From Sunday afternoon to 7 a.m. local time Monday, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport measured 7.03 inches of rain. This is more rainfall than the combined period from May 1 through Aug. 20, which produced just 6.53 inches of rain. Dallas typically gets 8.2 inches of rain over the summer.
Dallas reported 3.01 inches of rain in one hour overnight, provisionally the station’s highest 1-hour rainfall on record. Based on preliminary damage assessments in the area, Jenkins declared a state of disaster in Dallas County Monday evening, requesting state and federal assistance for those affected.
Dallas has been in the throes of an exceptional drought this summer, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and experienced a 67-day streak during which no measurable rain fell — the second-longest such streak in city history. That streak ended on Aug. 10, but drought conditions, as well as unusually hot weather, have persisted until the deluge that occurred Sunday into Monday.
