Freight operations delayed due to heavy rain, floods in Dallas-Fort Worth area

 Thunderstorms hit the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area Sunday night, August 21, forcing road closures and re-routing schemes that delayed transportation for hours. The torrential rains that fell in the span of 18 hours, caused flooded roads and homes and forced some drivers to abandon their vehicles in high water.

“It was very challenging coordinating late pickups and deliveries first thing in the morning,” Ruby Lee, principal at logistics provider Ultimate Transportation, told FreightWaves. “No one could get off the interstate due to raging water flooding on most service roads in the area.”

Lee said the company was operating as usual by Tuesday.  “But there is still lots of cleaning to be done. We had lots of debris in populated areas left after the flooding,” he added.

President and CEO of the Texas Trucking Association John Esparza said most trucking companies have protocols in case weather causes major disruptions to their schedules.

“We were anticipating rain yesterday – not as much as we received – but you’re going to see adjustments made by some trucking companies, whether that’s through rerouting or just experiencing some delays by taking more time,” he said.

“If it is difficult to move through areas that are experiencing flooding, the best thing is for precautions and communications to persist during times like this and set expectations on deliveries and such.”

The Fort Worth Fire Department attended to 500 calls for service and performed 174 high-water rescues and investigations, the department posted on Twitter.

Moreover, the Dallas Fire-Rescue Department responded to nearly 200 vehicle high-water rescues in the space of several hours.

Meanwhile, at least one fatality was blamed on the downpours. According to Clay Jenkins, presiding officer of the Dallas County commissioners, a 60-year-old woman was killed when her vehicle was swept away by flood waters at State Highway 352, west of downtown Dallas.

Jenkins declared a state of disaster for Dallas County and requested federal and state assistance for affected individuals.

The official National Weather Service record station at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport reported 23 centimeters of rain in the 24 hours ending at 2:00 p.m. on Monday, August 22. That ranked second for the top 10 most rain over 24 hours in Dallas on record. The most were 24.3 centimeters on September 4-5, 1932.

“We’ve been in drought conditions, so the ground soaked up a lot of it, but when you get that much rain over that short a period of time, it’s certainly going to cause flooding, and that’s what we saw, definitely in the urban areas here,” meteorologist Daniel Huckaby said.

Climate “experts” warn that California may soon be submerged in flood

The southern part of America has just experienced a sudden megadrought to megaflood occurrence. And as per climate experts, the heavy rains may soon strike the western U.S. – California in particular. 

According to a new study, climate change has already doubled the chances of a disastrous flood happening in California in the next four decades. Scientists say it would be unlike anything anyone alive today has ever experienced.

Climate scientist Daniel Swain described a mega-flood as “a very severe flood event across a broad region that has the potential to bring catastrophic impacts to society in the areas affected.”

He likened it to the flash flood events seen this summer in the St. Louis area and Kentucky, but across a much wider area, such as the entire state of California.

This kind of massive flood has the potential to be the most expensive geophysical disaster to date. The study indicated that this may cost more than $1 trillion in losses and could devastate the state’s lowland areas, including Los Angeles and Orange counties.

“Such a flood event in modern California would likely exceed the damages from a large magnitude earthquake by a considerable margin,” the study further said.

If this calamity happens, it would be more than five times the cost of Hurricane Katrina, the current costliest disaster in U.S. history.