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  • PHOTO BY ROBERT ANSCHUTZ
    The rain poured down throughout the Wimberley Valley.

Rainfall reaches records, limited flooding

Sunday was one of the hardest downpours of the last few decades, but the Wimberley Valley made it out without much flooding.

“The rain occurred on top of us and not upstream like it did in the (Memorial Weekend Floods of) 2015,” Raymond Schiflett, who has tracked weather in Wimberley for 31 years, said. “The ground was also so dry. Even though we had a few inches in the days preceding, that wasn’t enough to satisfy the dryness of the ground. It was just sucking up the water. It took a while for it to get saturated. If we had been getting rain all year long this would have been a much bigger flood event.”

Schiflett said that his gauges showed 5.27 inches of rain but some areas of Wimberley were just over six inches. According to his records, that was the 11th most rain the Wimberley Valley has received in one day in the last 31 years.

“That makes it a once in every three years type of rainfall,” Schiflett said. “It was pretty impressive, and nearly equal to what we got from Hurricane Harvey a year ago.”

The high-pressure system that had settled in over Texas for the summer finally broke over a week ago. In nine days, Wimberley received more than nine inches of rainfall. As of Sunday night, the area was still five inches below average rainfall for the year.

“The moisture had been building and building over those nine days,” Schiflett said. “We finally hit a trigger with a little cool front and a low pressure system coming in from the west. The atmosphere had so much moisture built up it was just waiting to be rung out.”

There are a few possibilities for heavy rains in the coming days and weeks, though Schiflett said it is too early to tell for sure.

“There are two systems lined up to affect our weather the next few weeks,” Schiflett said. “We may get nothing or a whole heck of a lot. The ground now is saturated. There is a tropical wave coming in (on Tuesday) and it may or may not develop into a tropical storm but it will bring a lot of rain with it. That could put another couple of inches into our valley this weekend. That could cause some flooding. Then beyond that, Hurricane Isaac… there is a chance it curves up towards Texas, but it’s hard to say at this point. So we have two shots in the next two weeks of major tropic systems that could really bring a lot of rain in. It’s too far out to write it with certainty, but there is a potential issue there. Enough to pay attention to.”

Wimberley View

P.O. Box 49
Wimberley, TX 78676
Phone: 512-847-2202
Fax: 512-847-9054