Warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico collided with a cold front resulting in extremely heavy rainfall in eastern Texas over the weekend. Rapid flooding resulted from reported rainfall of up to seven inches near Houston, Texas. The rainfall analysis was derived from the TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. These rainfall data are derived from a TRMM-calibrated merger of various other satellite rainfall data. TMPA rainfall totals are shown here for the 3-day period from April 26-29, 2013. This analysis shows that Houston was close to the center of an area of over 140 mm (~5.5 inches) of rainfall.

 

The below graph shows a time series of TMPA rainfall near Houston, Texas for the past seven days. One spike on this graph shows that rainfall over the weekend was at times falling at a rate of over 30mm/hr (~1.2 inches).

Images and Captions by Hal Pierce (SSAI/NASA GSFC)