Just a brief late evening update to address the ongoing chances for heavy rain and storms overnight and into Wednesday.  Heavy rainfall and storms ongoing across parts of the southern Texas panhandle rolling plains and western Permian Basin region will continue for the next several hours before decreasing in intensity by early Wednesday as a cold front pushes drier air into the region.  Overnight, our concerns will turn towards the central Texas Hill Country region and south central Texas which will likely be under the gun for two rounds of heavy rain and the potential for embedded severe thunderstorms.  The first round is expected to impact central and south central Texas between 1am and 5am with rainfall in excess of 3 inches likely…along with the threat for damaging wind and hail.  We’ll see a brief lull in storms around daybreak on Wednesday before the second round hits during the mid-morning hours dumping an additional 2-3 inches on top of that.  Flash Flood Watches have been issued across much of central Texas and portions of south central Texas beginning at 10pm this evening through 7pm Wednesday to address the likelihood of widespread flooding issues across these regions.  At this point, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where the heaviest amounts of rain will occur, especially if the front tries to stall across the region and storms continue to train over the same locations for longer than what’s projected at this point.  We will be keeping an eye on that tonight and tomorrow.

In addition to the risk of flooding overnight and into tomorrow, there will be a concern for severe storms across a widespread swath of south, south central and southeast Texas.  Once again, hail and damaging winds are expected to be the primary threats in addition to periods of very heavy rainfall.  The tornado threat is low, but non-zero…but that risk may become more elevated if we manage to see some clearing out ahead of the slowly advancing front.  Clearing and surface heating will only add to instability across the region…especially along and south of the I-59 corridor…which could result in a higher threat for seeing a few supercell thunderstorms with the threat for tornadoes during the afternoon hours.  This is also something we will continue to monitor tomorrow and will provide updates by tomorrow morning once the overnight forecast models have rolled in.  At any rate, residents across all of central, south central and southeast Texas…especially those in flood-prone areas…should be on high alert for flooding issues.