Memorial Day travel faces storms, flash flooding and delays across US
Storms were already snarling Memorial Day travel, with more than 1,000 flight delays and flood watches from Texas to the Gulf Coast. Up to 6 inches of rain could hit parts of the South.
A wet holiday setup was hitting U.S. travelers just as Memorial Day departures reached record levels, with more than 1,000 delays reported early Thursday morning and storm bands threatening roads, rails and airports across much of the eastern two-thirds of the country. AAA projected 45 million Americans would travel at least 50 miles from home between Thursday, May 21 and Monday, May 25, including 39.1 million by car and 3.66 million by plane.
The heaviest disruption was poised to stretch from Texas through Tennessee and Mississippi, where 3 to 6 inches of rain could fall through Tuesday. The Weather Prediction Center said a wet pattern was setting up as multiple disturbances interacted over the eastern U.S., supporting repeated rounds of thunderstorms and a holiday weekend marked by saturated ground, poor drainage and a higher risk of flash flooding. The threat was especially sharp for drivers, with flooded roadways and low-lying trouble spots likely to slow traffic on major routes.
In Texas, the risk was already concrete. The National Weather Service’s Houston-Galveston office kept a Flood Watch in effect for coastal counties through Monday morning, warning that multiple rounds of thunderstorms could produce locally heavy rainfall and flash flooding through the holiday weekend and into next week. The Houston area could receive 4 to 6 inches of rain between Tuesday and Memorial Day, with another 1 to 2 inches on Thursday and Friday and peak rainfall rates of 3 to 4 inches per hour over the weekend. In North and Central Texas, the Fort Worth-Dallas office expected scattered to widespread storms Thursday, with most locations seeing 0.5 to 1 inch and some spots getting 2 to 3 inches.
The Northeast faced a different but still disruptive version of the same pattern. Friday was expected to be mostly cloudy and 5 to 10 degrees below average for late May, followed by heavier rain Saturday and lingering showers Sunday and Monday. That combination raises the odds of delayed flights, slower highway travel and backup in busy airport corridors, even where rainfall totals are lower than in the South.
The rain is not entirely unwelcome in a region that has been battling drought and wildfire activity, but the timing is punishing. For airlines, airports and local officials, the holiday weekend is becoming a stress test of how quickly they can absorb storms that arrive in waves, not all at once.
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