Active Weather
Tropical Storm Edouard made landfall at 2:20 p.m. Central time on September 1 near Johnson Bayou, Louisiana, with maximum sustained winds of 60 mph. The wind portion of this storm is largely over. The rain is not, and the rain is the part that matters for households today.
A flood watch covers southeast Texas through Wednesday evening, including the Houston metropolitan area and Chambers County. A flood watch means conditions are favorable for flooding, not that flooding is occurring. It is the level at which a household pays attention and adjusts plans. A flood warning, if one is issued for your area, means flooding is happening or about to and calls for action.
The Weather Prediction Center places the upper Texas coast and far southwest Louisiana under a slight risk of excessive rainfall, the second of four levels. Its forecast shows a better than 70 percent chance of at least 5 inches of rain in a northwest oriented stripe running from Galveston Bay toward College Station, and a better than 40 percent chance of 8 inches in 24 hours nearer the coast.
Rainfall totals so far and expected: 3 to 7 inches generally across eastern Texas, with isolated amounts of 10 to 15 inches where storm bands stall over the same ground. Southwest Louisiana has taken up to about 4 inches. Rain rates within the heaviest bands can reach 3 to 4 inches an hour, which is faster than any storm drain system is built to handle.
Observed wind before and during landfall: gusts to 71 mph near the Texas and Louisiana border, 52 mph at Calcasieu Pass, and 46 mph at Cameron. Water levels ran 1 to 2 feet above normal tide levels along the southwestern Louisiana coast.
The action for a household in the watch area today is short. Do not drive into water across a road, at any depth, on any road you know well. The National Weather Service's guidance on this is Turn Around, Don't Drown, because depth is not judgeable from the driver's seat and the roadbed beneath the water may be gone. Beyond that: if you live somewhere that has taken on water before, move what you can up off the floor now rather than later, and keep a phone charged so you can receive a warning if one is issued for your county.
Arkansas and Oklahoma sit outside the heaviest rainfall, though remnant moisture works north through the week. New Mexico falls inside a marginal risk of excessive rainfall tied to the Four Corners monsoon pattern, where scattered thunderstorms can drop half an inch to three quarters of an inch in an hour over ground that does not absorb it well.
Infrastructure
Scattered power outages across southwest Louisiana and the upper Texas coast are the expected consequence of a 60 mph landfall. Utilities in both states are practiced at this and restoration on a storm of this size is typically measured in hours to a couple of days rather than weeks.
The infrastructure concern that outlasts the wind is road flooding. High water closes roads in the Houston area on far less rain than this, and closures can persist after the rain stops while water drains. Check road conditions before travelling rather than assuming a familiar route is open.
No active large wildfires are reported in the region. The National Interagency Fire Center's September 1 situation report lists no large uncontained fires in the Southern geographic area.
Public Health
No active public health advisories specific to the region. No air quality alerts are posted.
After any flooding, water that has been across a roadway or through a yard should be treated as contaminated. It commonly carries sewage, fuel, and agricultural runoff. Keep children and pets out of standing water, and if floodwater enters your home, the cleanup guidance from your state health department is the source worth following rather than general advice.
If your area is under a boil water notice at any point, that instruction comes from your water utility and supersedes anything in this brief. None is in effect as of this writing.
Watch Item
Edouard's remnant moisture continues moving inland through the week. The flash flood risk shifts north and east with it, gradually weakening as the system loses its connection to the Gulf. The pattern to watch is any band that stalls, because a stalled band over already saturated ground is how a manageable rain event becomes a serious one.
Beyond Edouard, the National Hurricane Center's outlook issued September 1 says tropical cyclone formation is not expected in the Atlantic basin over the next seven days. For a Gulf coast region in the first week of September, that is meaningful. Once Edouard's moisture clears, the coming week carries no new tropical threat.
That gives coastal Texas and Louisiana households a recovery window rather than a bracing window, and those are different things. If Edouard revealed a gap, this is the week to close it. The most common gaps a storm like this exposes are a phone with no way to charge, no stored water, and no current photographs of the inside of the house for an insurance claim.
The climatological peak of the Atlantic season falls on September 10. A quiet seven day outlook now does not extend past mid month, and this region's exposure stays high through October.
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