HARLINGEN — The cold front’s noisy passage Sunday brought some welcome relief from dry weather in the Rio Grande Valley.
National Weather Service forecasters in Brownsville report Harlingen led the way, recording 1.87 inches of rain. Brownsville recorded 1.40 inches of rain and McAllen 0.68 inches.
“It’s kind of a small dent, but really what we needed,” Rick Hallman, a meteorologist at the Brownsville NWS office, said Tuesday morning. “Moderate rain for a couple hours really helped ease things.”
Rainfall totals in the Valley this year have been far below normal, at least prior to Sunday’s deluge. Some areas of the lower Valley, like southeast Cameron County, were listed as being in “severe drought” conditions by the U.S. Drought Monitor.
In Hidalgo, Willacy and northern Cameron, the drought monitor as of last week listed the areas as “abnormally dry.”
For the year, Brownsville has recorded 5.86 inches of rainfall, almost two inches down from the average precipitation for the year which is 7.58 inches.
Harlingen’s rains Sunday brought the city’s measurable precipitation for the year to 6.45 inches, still short of the average rainfall of 7.75 inches.
In McAllen, which was the beneficiary of unseasonably heavy rains this spring, the city has recorded 5.87 inches of rain in 2017, less than an inch under its year-to-date average of 6.62 inches.
“Maybe we can catch up the rest of this week, especially on Wednesday night and Thursday morning,” Hallman said. “There’s pretty much a chance of rain every day but that seems to be our best chance this week.”
