DALLAS — Heavy rains across the drought-stricken Dallas-Fort Worth area on Monday caused streets to flood, submerging vehicles as officials warned motorists to stay off the roads and water seeped into some homes and businesses.
“The Dallas-Fort Worth area was pretty much ground zero for the heaviest rain overnight,” said Daniel Huckaby, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The official National Weather Service record station at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport reported 9.19 inches of rain in the 24 hours ending at 2 p.m. Monday. That ranked second for the top 10 most rain over 24 hours in Dallas on record. The most was 9.57 inches which fell Sept. 4-5, 1932.
“We’ve been in drought conditions, so the ground soaked up a lot of it but when you get that much rain over that short a period of time, it’s certainly going to cause flooding, and that’s what we saw, definitely in the urban areas here,” Huckaby said.
Across the area, rainfall amounts ranged from less than 1 inch to over 15 inches, said National Weather Service meteorologist Sarah Barnes. By Monday afternoon, the rain had moved out of the area, she said.
“There was quite a bit of variation in the rainfall totals,” Barnes said.
At least one fatality was blamed on the downpours as emergency responders across the area reported responding to hundreds of high-water calls. A 60-year-old woman was killed in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite when flood waters from South Mesquite Creek swept…
