Hurricane season will officially start on June 1.
SAN ANTONIO — It starts over the open ocean, where a specific recipe is required: warm water for fuel, deep moisture and weak upper-level winds. Instead of just a single thunderstorm, a hurricane is a highly organized, self-sustaining system. It continually draws moisture and energy upward from the water, creating its own localized environment.
Brad Reinhart, the senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, says that these ingredients are key for hurricane development.
“Those key ingredients in place can allow tropical waves or clusters of thunderstorms over the ocean to become better organized and strengthened eventually into a hurricane,” Reinhart said.
As hurricanes make landfall along the coast, the most dangerous threats are storm surge and destructive winds. But even as these systems move inland and weaken, they can still bring dangerous weather to South Central Texas.
“You’re not going to see the strongest winds in South Central Texas. But what you are at most risk for is that flooding rainfall. You know that you live in Flash Flood Alley,” Reinhart said.
Tropical systems contain huge amounts of moisture, and because we live in Flash Flood Alley, slow-moving storms can quickly dump several inches of rain and lead to dangerous flooding.
And it doesn’t even take a direct hit from the Gulf, as South-Central Texas is uniquely positioned to take a hit from the Pacific side, too.
“Occasionally, systems on the pacific side of Mexico, you can have moisture from those systems that kind of streams northward over northern Mexico, makes it to Texas, and that can cause really devastating flood impacts,” Reinhart said.
Beyond flooding, we have to watch for spin-up tornadoes in the outer rainbands, hundreds of miles from the center. And after the storm passes, power outages combined with Texas heat can create a dangerous secondary wave of heat-related illnesses.