West Texas Battered by Torrential Rains

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Torrential rains from the remnants of Hurricane Odile have battered West Texas, and police said on Sept. 22 they were investigating whether the death of a woman in El Paso was related to the flooding.

Rainfall amounts across Texas in the past week have ranged from two inches to as much as 14 inches. The greatest amount was recorded over a four-day period in a community about 70 miles southeast of Lubbock. Parts of El Paso got about 5 inches of rain from Sunday night into Monday morning.

El Paso police spokesman Darrel Petry said investigators are looking into an early morning traffic accident in which the woman’s car hit a curb and went into a flooded ditch. It hasn’t been determined if she died from the incident or drowned while in the ditch, he said.

Some high-water rescues were also reported in El Paso, a fire official there said. Other towns and cities experienced local street flooding.

More rain is expected across West Texas in the coming days, but nothing like what has fallen in the past four days, weather officials said.

Lake levels are up dramatically in areas where heavy rains fell the past week.

Meteorologist John Lipe with the National Weather Service in Lubbock said in an email that Lake JB Thomas about 110 miles southeast of Lubbock went from just 0.9 percent full before the rains to 41.6 percent full afterward and is believed to be now holding more water than it has since 1973. Lake Alan Henry, about 55 miles southeast of Lubbock, was 56.6 percent full before the rains and on Sept. 22 was 76 percent full afterward.

“It was a very good rain for everybody,” said Justin Weaver, another meteorologist with the weather service’s Lubbock office.

On Sept. 17, the combined storage of the Highland Lakes around Austin, Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan, which serve about 1 million people, as well as businesses and industry and agriculture when water is available, was at the lowest level of the year. Rainfall later on Sept. 17 and into Sept. 18 added a combined 20,000 acre-feet to the lakes, or about 6.5 billion gallons.

The rains were the result of upper-level moisture from the hurricane’s remnants, combined with a very moist air mass from the Gulf of Mexico in lower levels of the atmosphere. The result was an oversaturated air mass that made for heavy rains in a swath from southeast New Mexico and West Texas through the Austin area and into Houston.