Everything from Flooding Rains to Tornadoes

Did you notice all the heavy rain, flash flooding, and isolated tornadoes that occurred on Thursday? Well, if you did not, you did not have far to go to see some incredible rainfall that fell across the Texas Forest Country.

The image to your left is estimated rainfall from Storm Tracker Live Doppler Network.

Notice the swath of heavy rain that fell from Palestine up to Frankston and Tyler. That band of red indicates anywhere from 8-10" of rain that fell from overnight Wednesday and lasting through most of the day on Thursday.

With all of this rain coming down in just a short period of time, there were numerous road closures and high water rescues.

This narrow band of heavy rain was due to a slow moving upper level low which was situated over Anderson county before slowly drifting into Smith county today.

If that low had been further to the southeast, we may have received some of those flooding rains here in Deep East Texas.

In addition to the heavy rain, we even saw a tornado that touched down near 11am Thursday in western Houston county.

This weak tornado touched down just off of Highway 7 on Dickson Hopewell Road. This was about 5-8 miles west of Crockett and southwest of Latexo.

There was a path of downed trees and power lines, but no injuries were reported.

With a tropical airmass in place, it is not uncommon to see a few tornadoes. However, they are typically weak, doing very minor damage.

They are also quick spin ups that are rain-wrapped, so sometimes they are difficult to see.

The National Weather Service out of Houston will survey the damage and rate the tornado over the next couple of days. Odds are it will be an EF0 or an EF1, which is on the low end of the scale.