Where Was The Rain For DFW?
Earlier this week it looked like a heavy rain event would be possible for DFW. And even Wednesday morning the chance looked pretty good for some heavy rain. But the atmosphere did not agree. Of course, heavy rain did fall in Central Texas around Austin and just to the SE of Dallas. We missed the heavy rain by about 75 to 100 miles.
It was frustrating to see my forecast miss as it did. What happened was dry air in the mid levels of the atmosphere found its way into our area. No forecast model spotted this dry air. There was nothing on the maps that indicated this dry air would be there. The only thing I can surmise as to what created this dry air was the subsidence on the backside of an upper level disturbance.
When you see me draw a red dashed line on my maps like the one below. This represents an upper level disturbance.
On the backside of that disturbance the air tends to sink. And as air sinks it warms and subsequently dries.
That dry air shut off the rain. But just to the east the heavy rain fell and the tropical moisture became concentrated.
On this link, there are some of the rainfall totals from Central Texas where the rain was very intense most of Wednesday night.
Here is a look at the rainfall totals in DFW. Just not much at all.
There are decent rain chances in the forecast for early next week. Hopefully, more of us will pick up some rain.
