Flood in Sherman County, Texas

A property was flooded with water up to the porch through about noon.

A slow moving cold front moved south out of Kansas into the northern Panhandles during the evening of June 18 into the morning of June 19, 2024. The cold front along with upper level dynamics and abundant moisture throughout the atmosphere, combined to form a line of showers and thunderstorms across the northern half of the Panhandles, in particular for the Oklahoma Panhandle. Due to weak flow aloft, the storms moved very slowly and when attached to the cold front, were able to keep moving over the same locations for hours at a time. With moisture near or above the climatological maximum in place over the Panhandles, the stronger thunderstorms were able to produce rainfall rates upwards of 3 to 4 inches per hour at times. With these rain rates and several hours of rainfall occurring at some locations, rainfall totals upwards of 5 to 9 inches were recorded across the north central Texas Panhandle into Texas and Beaver counties of the Oklahoma Panhandle. A majority of this rainfall fell in 1 to 2 hours, which maximized the flash flood potential. This resulted in many roads were closed or completely washed out, high water rescues were performed due to stranded motorists, and many citizens woke up to feet of water outside, and in some cases inside, their homes. Additionally, some of these storms were able to take advantage of the unstable airmass across the Panhandles and produced large hail and damaging winds. Although many hail reports ranged from penny to quarter size, some locations did have hail upwards of 2 to potentially 2.5 inches (tennis ball) across the same areas that received historic levels of flash flooding.