TS Bill

We awaken this morning to learn that the National Hurricane Center named Bill as a tropical storm overnight and are putting up watches, warnings, and comment on the storm.  It looks like it will come ashore somewhere southwest of Houston, start that familiar arc that those storms make, roll over Dallas, then head for St. Louis.  The latest map I've seen of rainfall potential looks like this:

Here in central Louisiana, we'll get some rain from it, sure as God made little green apples, but its bigger potential is all that water that will soon be falling on central Texas and eastern Oklahoma.  Those rivers, creeks, and lakes are still swollen from the rains in March, April, and May. While everyone is rightly concerned about localized flooding in the Houston area, all that water has to go somewhere and a bunch of that water will find its way into the Red River system, and eventually flow through Shreveport/Bossier, which is experiencing record floods right now.  Three or four days later it will find its way to central Louisiana.

According to the local gauges, the Red river is supposed to crest today, and start dropping slowly and the last gush of fresh water flows past us.  A storm the magnitude of Bill may delay that runoff.  If the river is full of water, the creeks, streams and bayous have no place to send water, and backwater flooding will continue.