Authorities respond after vehicles were swept away by floodwaters in San Antonio on Thursday.
Lekan Oyekanmi/AP
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Lekan Oyekanmi/AP
Flash floods hit the San Antonio area late last week, leaving 13 dead, the San Antonio Fire Department confirmed over the weekend.
The flooding arrived in the San Antonio area on Thursday, when a record 6.11 inches of rain fell, including about 4 inches that fell in a single hour early Thursday morning, according to the National Weather Service.
On Saturday, the fire department released the names of most those killed, Texas Public Radio reported.
The fire department said it responded to more than 70 water rescues, according to TPR. The fire department did not immediately respond to NPR’s request for information about rescues.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve been dealing with a drought,” Mack Morris, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said to NPR on Sunday. “So we haven’t had a lot of flash flooding occur over the last three to five years, at least not anything nearly as significant as what occurred on Thursday.”
Other regions in Texas witnessed high rainfall on Thursday, largely due to thunderstorms in southern Texas.
Storms in Appalachia also contributed to at least three deaths in West Virginia over the weekend. The state’s Wheeling-Ohio County emergency management agency said more people were reported missing.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey declared a state of emergency for Ohio County. He said on Sunday that roughly 3 to 4 inches of rain fell in less than an hour in some areas, and there was flash flooding in the city of Wheeling and towns of Triadelphia and Valley Grove.
Later on Sunday, more flash flooding led to a partial apartment collapse in Marion County, where the governor also declared a state of emergency.
“Please — stay off the roads. Do not underestimate the strength and speed of these floods. Pray for our friends and neighbors during this challenging time for our state,” Morrisey said in a statement Sunday night.
More storms are predicted across the U.S.
Parts of Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas could see severe thunderstorms with large hail and critical gusts of wind, some being over 75 miles per hour, according to the NWS.
Virginia, North Carolina and several states in the central and southern Plains could also see “strong to severe thunderstorms,” according to the NWS.
Meanwhile, the mid-Atlantic was in store for “excessive rainfall” through Monday morning.
