Historic Rainfall in the Lubbock Area

[M Conder]

As of 7:30 pm, 6 inches of rain has fallen at the Lubbock airport today (Sept 11). This breaks the all-time 24-hr record of 5.82 inches set on October 18-19, 1983. It is still raining in Lubbock at 9 pm - and the new 24-hr record may end up around 7-8 inches.

The old record was due to the remnants of Pacific hurricane Tico (which also dumped 16.95 inches at Chickasha, OK). I believe it interacted with a front and we do have a weak one across the area now - along with a trough across the desert Southwest and the sw flow aloft capturing subtropical moisture - including from TD Lowell.

Interesting that here in Lubbock our top 2 rainfalls will now be associated with a fall remnant Pacific tropical systems - not a summertime MCS nor a gulf system - this as Ike is getting set to crash ashore near Houston.

 

[Connor McCrorey]

A friend just told me that Texas Tech canceled classes because of all the rain. Apparently the water doesn't really have anywhere to go up there, so they had major flooding issues.

 

[M Conder]

Yes, they canceled all the schools across the area - first time I can remember them getting canceled for rain/flooding. The area is so flat, the water doesn't drain easy. The Playa lakes fill up very quickly. The city of Lubbock has spent a ton of money recently trying to upgrade the drainage across town - basically connecting the Playas to drainage so that the water will follow a general easterly downslope track and drain faster. Much that's not much help when this much rain falls in such a short period of time. Still though it appears that flooding from this event isn't major (unless we get significantly more rain this afternoon). 24-hour total for Lubbock came out to 7.80 inches

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

There were stalled out vehicles everywhere last night. The streets pretty much became rivers in lack of the drainage system here. Some streets had over a foot of water flowing down them. The only really bad thing I saw last night was with all the contruction going on here, there were construction cones floating all over the place. You would have no idea if your were even still in your lane.