Flooding strands motorists in Fort Worth, causes flight delays at D/FW Airport

The rainfall that started Thursday and continued mostly uninterrupted through Friday caused transportation problems both on the ground and in the air.

Fort Worth firefighters recorded at least 25 high-water calls and four high-water rescues Friday night. Multiple vehicles were stranded for a time at Hulen Street and Interstate 30; road closures were also reported in North Richland Hills.

The weather caused headaches for air travelers, too, including the cancellation of 175 flights at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport by 5 p.m. Friday, according to David Magaña, airport spokesman. By 9:30 p.m., the flight-tracking website flightaware.com listed 298 canceled flights.

Rain fell steadily Friday through much of the state and is forecast to continue through at least Saturday as a storm system slowly moves eastward. Rainfall totals had already surpassed 12 inches by Friday evening in some areas, including more than 13 inches at the airport in Corsicana, 50 miles south of Dallas.

Torrential rains across North and Central Texas closed heavily traveled highways for a while and scrambled the schedule of high school and college football games. UIL marching band contests scheduled for Saturday in Carrollton and Fort Worth were moved to Monday.

Arlington offered sandbags to residents through 5 p.m. Oncor showed sporadic power outages across North Texas on Friday night.

To the south and east, high water caused Interstate 35 to be closed in West and Interstate 45 to be closed in Corsicana, the Texas Department of Transportation reported. No injuries or significant damage has been reported. Emergency responders were working to assist stranded motorists in I-45 backups reported to extend for more than 12 miles, the highway department said.

“With the moisture and the cold front moving into the area, we’re going to see more storms,” said National Weather Service meteoroloigst Eric Martello. “The only question is how much rain we will see.”

Forecasters predict 3 to 6 inches more across the Metroplex before the storms move out late Saturday night or Sunday. And they aren’t ruling out some places seeing 8 to 10 inches more.

On Friday, DFW Airport had received 2.98 inches of rain as of 9 p.m., breaking the previous record of 2.38 inches. Some 4.38 inches fell in the 24-hour period ending at 5:30 p.m. Friday.

It had now rained 43.88 inches this year, more than double all of 2014, when it 21.32 fell. According to Matt Stalley at the National Weather Service, those rain totals meant 2015 had become the 17th-wettest year on record for the DFW metropolitan area.

Emergency management officials across the state contending with multiple storm systems are preparing for heavy rains to continue through the weekend and widespread flooding that may follow.

As much as 7 more inches of rain was forecast for the Waco-Corsicana corridor. In South Texas, emergency workers are concerned that the current system will be followed by the wet remnants of powerful Hurricane Patricia, which made landfall Friday evening in southwestern Mexico.

But for emergency officials a primary concern is the widespread flooding anticipated over the weekend. The potential for flooding comes five months after torrential spring storms caused more than 30 deaths and left large swaths of the state underwater.

The Memorial Day weekend brought an astonishing amount of rainfall, with some isolated areas receiving more than 20 inches. Homes were either damaged or swept away by river water southwest of Austin, about 1,500 homes in the Houston area alone sustained flood damage, and neighborhoods throughout the state were cut off by rising waters.

Little rain has fallen since then.

Nim Kidd, chief of the state emergency management office, on Friday encouraged people to stay off roadways and avoid high water.

“This is a dangerous situation that will be developing over the weekend,” Kidd said.

“We had a very wet spring and then the summer and fall, the first part of the fall, proved to be very, very dry,” Bain said. “The rain is certainly welcome across the area.”

More than half of the state’s 254 counties had outdoor burn bans in effect Friday because of previous dry conditions, the Texas A&M Forest Service reported.

National Weather Service meteorologist Kurt Van Speybroeck said that as the hurricane moves inland, the mountains of Mexico “will shred Patricia apart,” but the weakened system will continue moving north and eventually bring another round of rain to Texas before moving into Arkansas, Louisiana and beyond.

“It’s definitely going to be beneficial when it comes to the drought and fire concerns we’ve had over several weeks in Texas,” Van Speybroeck said.

This story was originally published October 23, 2015 at 7:42 AM with the headline "Flooding strands motorists in Fort Worth, causes flight delays at D/FW Airport."