Flash Flood — Refugio, Texas

2018-06-19 · near Greta, Refugio, Texas

Event narrative

Portions of Highway 183 north of Refugio had water over the roadway.

Wider weather episode

A tropical wave moved into South Texas on June 18th. A series of upper level disturbances interacted with this wave throughout its life cycle. This helped to maintain a broad area of low pressure at all levels of the atmosphere for the period from June 18th through June 20th across South Texas and the adjacent Gulf waters. Several boundaries and convergence along the coastline aided the production of heavy rainfall.

Most of the rain occurred between the early morning hours of June 19th through the morning of the 20th. Some of these storms produced rainfall rates as high as 5-6 inches per hour. Storm total rainfall amounts from Monday (June 18) morning through Thursday (June 21) morning were as high as 15 to 18 inches across southern and southeastern Jim Wells County, extreme northwest Kleberg County, isolated locations in Nueces County, central San Patricio County, Aransas County, and western Refugio County.

Even though most of South Texas was in a moderate to extreme drought before the heavy rains fell, flooding still occurred due to the intense rainfall rates which produced copious amounts of rainfall. Flooding of many streets, some with several feet of water, were quite common across many South Texas communities, generally east of Highway 281. Some of the hardest affected cities and towns were Alfred, Alice, Aransas Pass, Bonnie View, Corpus Christi, La Gloria, Odem, Orange Grove, Port Aransas, Premont, Rios, Rockport, Sinton, and Woodsboro. Several water rescues, especially in Corpus Christi, had to be performed due to the depth of the water stalling out vehicles.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (28.3516, -97.2518)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 762182. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.