Flash Flooding Likely as Severe Storms Pound Central Plains and Texas

Overview

• Saturday morning, the Storm Prediction Center kept multiple Severe Thunderstorm Watches in effect across the central Plains as clusters and supercells produced large hail and damaging wind gusts.
• The SPC warned an 80 percent chance of new watches for far northern Kansas into southern and eastern Nebraska where storms could yield hail up to about 2.5 inches and wind gusts to 65–80 mph.
• The Weather Prediction Center said an elongated corridor from west‑central and northwest Texas into southwest and central Oklahoma is seeing training, backbuilding storms with rates of 2 to 3 inches per hour and localized totals of 3 to 5+ inches.
• Central Texas and the Hill Country face similar flash‑flood risk from very efficient warm‑rain storms fueled by a deep tropical moisture feed that can produce 2 to 3 inches per hour and 3 to 4+ inch totals overnight.
• Forecasters point to high precipitable water, a strengthening nocturnal low‑level jet, and stalled surface troughs as the reasons storms are anchoring and repeatedly regenerating over the same areas, which raises the chance of urban and small‑stream flooding and could lead to more watches and warnings from local NWS offices and River Forecast Centers.