May 15th, 2012 at 4:51 pm by Jim Spencer under Weather
 Rain totals Monday night through Tuesday (BE sure to look under “24 Hour” Column to see storm totals.LCRA – Rainfall Summary |
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Units in inches This information comes from LCRA’s network of remote gauges. Most of the gauges have no public access. |
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May 15th, 2012 at 12:08 pm by Natalie Stoll under Weather
An upper level disturbance traversing the state sparked widespread showers and a few thunderstorms late Monday through Tuesday morning across Central Texas. Most of the area got a decent soaking with rainfall totals ranging from a half inch to 1.5 inches. One viewer near La Grange reported more than 2 inches of rain!
The NWS issued a Flood Advisory for the metro area, including Travis, Hays and Williamson counties, until two in the afternoon. Minor flooding was possible in low water crossings and along creeks and streams because of extra runoff.
Here are more rainfall totals from the LCRA’s Hydromet site and the CoCoRaHS network.
| LCRA – Rainfall Summary |
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Units in inches This information comes from LCRA’s network of remote gauges. Most of the gauges have no public access. |
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May 14th, 2012 at 1:30 pm by Jim Spencer under Weather
The city of Austin wants us to remind you that Stage 2 water restrictions remain in place, despite the recent rain.
Austin—Stage 2 Water Restrictions are still in effect for Austin Water customers because the combined levels of Lakes Buchannan and Travis are less than half-full. Austin entered Stage 2 Water Restrictions on September 6, 2011, when the Lower Colorado River Authority requested mandatory water restrictions of its wholesale customers.
Even though the recent rains have lessened the effects of the drought and added more water to the lakes, Lake Travis is 31 feet below its normal for April and Lake Buchanan is 16 feet below normal for this time of year. Read the rest of this entry »
May 13th, 2012 at 9:42 pm by David Mazza under Weather
Another week with good rains across the area has provide more lift to area lakes. While the numbers are still well below normal, they are improving. Lake Travis has jumped nearly 3 feet in the past 5 days, and has risen to its highest levels since last summer in July. The lake is still roughly 30 feet (10 yards) below normal for this time of year, but with more rain in the forecast for the early part of the work week, hopefully we can chip off another foot or two on that deficit this week.
Below is a graph showing the highest recorded levels for Lake Travis in each month for the past year. The time a ready of 641.32′ was recorded was last July. In August the max level was at 639.95′, and we didn’t see a level of 640′ again until March of this year. Notice the Lake Level has somewhat flat-lined again, mainly because of the abnormally dry April that we just had. The good news is that we have recorded rises in the lake every month this year.
May 12th, 2012 at 8:48 pm by David Mazza under Weather
I did some fun nerdy number crunching this evening and found some pretty impressive stats on our rainfall so far this year. Through today we have received 17.67 inches of rain at Camp Mabry, and 20.45 inches out at the airport (ABIA). Both of these numbers are well above normal, Mabry at +7″, and ABIA at +10″ for the year. The new drought monitor that comes out on Thursday morning will include all the rainfall that we saw the last few days, but will most likely still show dry conditions across a good portion of our area. What is important to note is that we are battling the effects of a long term drought that our area was in. Over a period of 3 months last year from July 1-Sept 30, we picked up 0.06″ of rainfall at ABIA, and 0.23″ at Mabry. Then we also clocked what seemed like a million days of 100+ degree heat during that time period. These kinds of things really accelerate a drought as they did last year. So are big rainfalls of 2012 are slowly chipping away at the drought.
Below is a comparison of rainfall from 2011 to 2012 for Camp Mabry. So far this year we have received almost 11 inches more rainfall than we did up to this same day last year. Now to be fair, we did have 1 extra day this year, but to equal things out, I included today (May 12th) for both years. Clearly we didn’t see any rain today (5/12/12), but on May 12th of 2011 it was the single wettest day of the year at both Austin locations. In fact, at Camp Mabry, we saw 2.96″ of rain on 5/12/11, which was more rainfall than we saw in 10 other MONTHS in 2011! At ABIA we received a more modest 1.66″ on 5/12/11, which tallied a higher total than 7 other MONTHS at that location in 2011. Ok, so maybe I skewed the data to make 2011 look a little wetter to this point, but whatever, 2012 is still winning by a large margin.
So far this year we have received 17.67″ of rain at Mabry, it took us until December 15th of last year to hit that total. Also, our total so far this year is roughly 7″ above normal, as compared to last year when we were almost 4″ below normal, an 11″ swing.
The numbers for ABIA are almost more impressive, as we have seen 20.45″ of rain so far this year, compared to only 6.42″ through the same time period last year. The 2011 reading though May 12th was about 4″ below normal, where as in 2012 we are about 10″ above normal for rainfall so far. That is a 14″ difference in rainfall so far. If you want to know how long it took in 2011 to reach the 20.45″ mark….well we never hit it! In fact, if you include all of 2011, and “borrow” the first 25 days of 2012, you finally hit the 20.45″ mark at ABIA.
This is all good news so far this year for rainfall, but we need it to continue. If we were to cut off the rainfall for the rest of the year at ABIA, 2012 would still technically be wetter than 2011. However, if we closed the year with 7.5 straight months without rain, we would probably be in a worse drought than in 2011. Hopefully Mother Nature will continue to give us well needed rain to help keep the soil moist and fill the lakes and rivers back to normal levels!
May 11th, 2012 at 11:41 am by Natalie Stoll under Weather
Heavy thunderstorms that moved through Central Texas Thursday dropped inches of rain. Camp Mabry in Austin got 2.7o inches. That broke the record for the day set back in 1943. Check out our Weather Diary to see how this compares to past years.
Nearly 4 inches of rain in Wimberley. Courtesy: Destinee Ware
Storm in Dripping Springs, TX. Courtesy: Buddy Park
These pictures came into the First Warning Weather Center from our viewers. If you’re holding onto one you’d like to share, email it to us at ReportIt@kxan.com
Here are all the rainfall reports from the volunteer CoCoRaHS network:
COCORAHS PRECIPITATION SUMMARY NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO TX 1117 AM CDT FRI MAY 11 2012 COCORAHS PRECIPITATION REPORTS THESE REPORTS ARE CONSIDERED SUPPLEMENTAL AND UNOFFICIAL VALUES ARE FOR THE PREVIOUS 24 HOURS ENDING AROUND 7 AM LOCAL TIME .B EWX 0511 C DH07/PP/SF/SD/SW : :COCORAHS PRECIPITATION REPORTS FOR THE LOCAL AREA : : SNOW SNOW WATER : PCPN FALL DEPTH EQUIV : TX-FY-33 : FAYETTEVILLE 1.0 SW * : 5.08 / MM / MM / MM TX-AT-16 : PLEASANTON 5.2 ENE * : 4.67 / MM / MM / MM TX-WO-28 : FLORESVILLE 8.9 WNW * : 4.39 / MM / MM / MM TX-AT-19 : CHRISTINE 1.4 W * : 4.33 / MM / MM / MM TX-KS-03 : KARNES CITY 12.6 WSW * : 4.32 / MM / MM / MM TX-HYS-21 : SAN MARCOS 7.1 W * : 4.30 / MM / MM / MM TX-RL-08 : LEAKEY 1.5 ENE * : 4.19 / MM / MM / MM TX-CML-08 : NEW BRAUNFELS 7.2 NW * : 4.17 / MM / MM / MM TX-CML-29 : NEW BRAUNFELS 5.9 NW * : 4.11 / MM / MM / MM TX-HYS-17 : DRIPPING SPRINGS 8.4 W * : 4.04 / MM / MM / MM TX-HYS-61 : SAN MARCOS 8.1 W * : 3.96 / MM / MM / MM TX-GZ-12 : SMILEY 0.4 NNE * : 3.88 / MM / MM / MM TX-KS-05 : RUNGE 2.3 NNW * : 3.87 / MM / MM / MM TX-UV-16 : CAMP WOOD 15.4 S * : 3.83 / MM / MM / MM
May 10th, 2012 at 2:39 am by Josh Hinkle under Politics
March 29, 2006, West Brook High School bus crash
I first met Brad Brown and Steve Forman in the summer of 2010, driving four hours from Austin to Beaumont. Both men were goofy in their own ways, joking around before the interview began. They seemed like great dads, and it saddened me to know we would soon be picking apart the details of an emotional wreck that involved their teenage daughters.
On March 29, 2006, what was meant to be a 70-mile trip to a soccer tournament turned into something the town of Beaumont and West Brook High School will likely never forget. The bus carrying a team of more than 20 girls swerved, trying to avoid debris from a truck on a rainy U.S. 90 in Liberty County and overturned. There were no seat belts on board.
Brown’s 16-year-old daughter, Ashley, was one of two girls killed in the crash, thrown from her seat (Alicia Bonura, 18, also died). Forman’s daughter, Allison, 17, was severely injured, trapped under the bus for more than an hour before rescue.
My original story with these parents came just before the law they helped create went into effect. After the accident, they had worked with the state legislature to require all new school buses purchased in Texas to have lap-shoulder belts – something they felt could have prevented their tragedy. The requirement would remain in place, as long as funding was available.
West Brook High girls soccer team, 2006
Over the years since, the state’s financial situation shifted, forcing all agencies to make drastic cuts. The Texas Education Agency, which administered the fund, slashed its amount from $10 million to what was eventually $2.5 million.
That was the story in 2010. We reported why the program was dealt this blow. Slow implementation of certain guidelines by the Texas Transportation Institute and the Legislative Budget Board, then severe accounting decisions by TEA. The remaining funds were not what those parents had in mind, but at least they could help some schools out.
Two years later, I began to wonder what happened to the money, whether districts had taken advantage of what the state was offering. To my surprise, only 12 districts had applied for the funding. Even more surprising – only four of those districts received the money, and their total sum was less than $500,000.
Gov. Rick Perry visits a bus crash memorial outside West Brook High in 2007, signing the seat belt law on site. (Dave Ryan, AP/HC)
Over the course of three months, numerous public information requests, and thousands of records, the next part of this story began to develop. The reason many of the districts did not receive funding – they did not submit all of the proper paperwork. TEA had no record of telling those districts why they would not be awarded the grants or what they could do to complete their application to obtain the funds.
A few of those districts ended up eventually buying new buses without belts, because they did not have access to that extra funding. Putting belts on buses can be about $6,500, in addition to at least $60,000 for the bus itself – not cheap, at all.
Most of the “unclaimed” $2 million remaining was swept into other programs TEA deemed priorities – fine arts, early childhood, and English language proficiency. After we revealed those discoveries to Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville – the lawmaker behind this program – he saw how his work with those Beaumont families years ago was falling apart. He now plans to call on TEA to reconsider the program and also ask the legislature to re-fund it.
Allison Forman
Two years since our initial interview, I traveled back to Beaumont to talk to Brown and Forman again. It had been six years since the accident, and they are still dealing with the aftermath. Forman’s daughter, Allison, is living with the effects of her injuries. Her left arm is now fused at an angle, and she has limited use of her hand. As Brown moved past that point of the interview, he started to light up when speaking about Allison’s future. Last year, she graduated from Texas A&M with a degree in architecture. She is now working on her graduate studies in Austin and preparing for her wedding this fall.
Ashley Brown
Turning to Brown, it was clear the future was something he had considered many times over the years. When asked what he thought his daughter, Ashley, would be doing now if she had survived the wreck, he said he “gave up on the ‘what if’ game long ago.” Wondering about Ashley’s future would not change anything. Real change, he said, would only come by keeping her memory alive with this law. Like Lucio, he plans to work toward its restoration next session to make sure no parent ever has to experience his pain.
May 9th, 2012 at 6:59 pm by Jim Spencer under Weather
Rain and thunderstorms are expected to increase across the area Thursday night into Friday morning. A few severe thunderstorms are also possible. The latest projections from computer models and the National Weather Service have decreased slightly the forecast rainfall totals to 2-3″, with isolated 4-6 inch amounts.
The upper level storm system bringing the rainfall is now tracking across northern Mexico, and won’t move away from our area until Saturday, so some lingering showers could continue into the weekend, though the heaviest rain should end by Friday night.
FLOOD WATCH NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO TX THU MAY 10 2012 ...A FLASH FLOOD WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR ALL OF SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS FROM 6 PM THIS EVENING UNTIL NOON FRIDAY... .AN UPPER LEVEL LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM ACROSS NORTHERN MEXICO WILL MOVE EASTWARD ACROSS TEXAS THROUGH FRIDAY. NUMEROUS SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS ARE EXPECTED THROUGH THIS AFTERNOON AND INTO THE EARLY MORNING HOURS FRIDAY. RAIN CHANCES ARE EXPECTED TO DECREASE FROM WEST TO EAST DURING THE DAY FRIDAY.
May 9th, 2012 at 11:47 am by Natalie Stoll under Weather
An upper level low pressure system moving over northern Mexico will cross Texas Friday. As it moves closer, our rain chances pick up. Scattered showers and thunderstorms, some with heavy rain, will develop Thursday afternoon in Central Texas.
Here’s more from the National Weather Service:
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO TX 717 AM CDT WED MAY 9 2012 LLANO-BURNET-WILLIAMSON-VAL VERDE-EDWARDS-REAL-KERR-BANDERA- GILLESPIE-KENDALL-BLANCO-HAYS-TRAVIS-BASTROP-LEE-KINNEY-UVALDE- MEDINA-BEXAR-COMAL-GUADALUPE-CALDWELL-FAYETTE-MAVERICK-ZAVALA- FRIO-ATASCOSA-WILSON-KARNES-GONZALES-DE WITT-LAVACA-DIMMIT- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...LLANO...BURNET...GEORGETOWN...DEL RIO... ROCKSPRINGS...LEAKEY...KERRVILLE...BANDERA...FREDERICKSBURG... BOERNE...BLANCO...SAN MARCOS...AUSTIN...BASTROP...GIDDINGS... BRACKETTVILLE...UVALDE...HONDO...SAN ANTONIO...NEW BRAUNFELS... SEGUIN...LOCKHART...LA GRANGE...EAGLE PASS...CRYSTAL CITY... PEARSALL...PLEASANTON...FLORESVILLE...KARNES CITY...GONZALES... CUERO...HALLETTSVILLE...CARRIZO SPRINGS 717 AM CDT WED MAY 9 2012 ...HEAVY RAINFALL EVENT TO UNFOLD EARLY THURSDAY MORNING THROUGH LATE FRIDAY MORNING... ...STRONG TO SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS POSSIBLE OVER PARTS OF SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS THURSDAY NIGHT... AN UPPER LEVEL LOW WILL INTERACT WITH A WEAK FRONTAL INVERSION OVER TEXAS AND CREATE A POTENTIAL FOR LOCALLY HEAVY RAINFALL LATE TONIGHT THROUGH FRIDAY MORNING. SCATTERED LIGHT RAIN SHOWERS TODAY AND THIS EVENING WILL INCREASE TO BECOME NUMEROUS ACROSS WESTERN PARTS OF SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS BY EARLY THURSDAY MORNING. WIDESPREAD MODERATE TO HEAVY RAINS ARE EXPECTED TO DEVELOP DURING THE DAY THURSDAY AND CONTINUE THROUGH LATE FRIDAY MORNING.
May 8th, 2012 at 7:33 pm by Jim Spencer under Weather
Rainfall totals over the last two days have been significant over some areas, not so much in others. But, if you haven’t been one of the lucky ones yet, there is still hope.
Light rain was tapering off Tuesday evening, and only scattered showers or a thunderstorm are expected Wednesday. Rain and storms are expected to increase across the area again Thursday through Friday.
We are tracking a slow moving upper level low pressure system over the Baha Peninsula, which will track to Texas between now and Friday. This storm could bring another 1-3 inches of rain to our area, with some isolated totals of 4-5 inches or more.
This graphic shows how much rain is expected to fall between Tuesday night and the weekend:
