In brief: Today we tackle Invest 92L, a minimal threat for the Southeast. We also have some important housekeeping to address, and we also have a quick update on some horrific flooding in parts of Central Texas overnight.
First, some housekeeping
We are going to begin this morning with some housekeeping regarding The Eyewall. Eric and myself, along with Dwight Silverman, have been discussing the future of the site. A lot of you have reached out to request ways to support our work beyond just reading, and we have (to this point) resisted that, other than various small sponsorships last hurricane season. And we are grateful for the interest many potential sponsors have shown this year too! However, we are going to try something else this year: subscriptions.
To be abundantly clear, our daily content will remain free, never paywalled, and that is not going to change as long as we operate this site. So, forever. This year, however, we will give readers who wish to support the site the option to do so at a modest cost, as well as a premium option for people who want a little bit more access. We will have more information on this soon.
The first step in this process is to migrate our email newsletter over to the Substack platform. If you currently subscribe to The Eyewall via email, your email should roll over to our Substack without you having to do anything. We understand a few people may have various concerns about the Substack platform, and some of the content posted there by other writers. If you decide to unsubscribe from emails, we understand. But the benefits of this route outweigh the potential costs. The primary issue is that WordPress caps our email subscribers, and the process to manage an account is not user-friendly. For a site with a limited budget such as ours, this is the best way to ensure the continued delivery of an email newsletter with our content. We will still continue to post here at The Eyewall.com, but updates will not be sent via email from here.
Also: Nothing at all is changing with Space City Weather. So for our Houston readers, our site, email, and annual fundraiser is not changing! This only applies to The Eyewall.
Our target date for this migration of The Eyewall newsletter to Substack is Monday, July 7th. We hope that this will offer us the flexibility to do more things, offer more options, more content, and a better overall user experience as time goes on. Thanks for your support!
Invest 92L
First, apologies for a couple days of lapse. Your primary author has been juggling family priorities the last couple days. Let’s get into this. First off, we now have Invest 92L. It’s sitting off the Southeast coast.
While it looks fairly impressive on satellite, underneath all the thunderstorms there is not a whole lot of apparent organization to this. That said, we will find out more later as hurricane hunters fly into the system to investigate. I think we could briefly squeeze a depression or low-end tropical storm out of this, but it’ll be close. Thankfully, it’s one of those where despite the classification, the impacts should be the same. We expect that this will migrate to the north over the next day or so, and it will eventually come ashore in the Carolinas before lifting north and east and out to sea.
The main threat from 92L will be locally heavy rainfall. The Carolinas look particularly prone to this where 1 to 4 inches of rain could fall near the coast. Not to minimize any threat, but there are currently not any flood watches posted. Still, localized flooding is a possibility with this in those areas. Thankfully, threats up the coast look limited as well.
One other item to watch: Rip currents. Always a hazard but especially with the beaches *packed* this holiday weekend. Please use caution while in the water and always swim with a lifeguard present if that’s possible.
Beyond 92L
Nothing yet. It looks quiet for the time being.
Catastrophic Texas flooding
I want to close with one other major weather story you may hear about. Here’s what I wrote this morning at our Houston companion site, Space City Weather.
As noted yesterday morning by Eric, the forecast changed rather abruptly. And yesterday’s storms, while fairly quick movers, hit with some punch. Thankfully they did, as we saw instantaneous rain rates as high as 4 to 6 inches per hour in spots! Rainfall varied overall, with as much as 2 inches or a bit more in northeast Harris County and about a quarter-inch in western Harris County.
On a more serious note, parts of Hill County have seen some severe rain overnight. South-Central Kerr County is estimated to have received as much as nearly a foot of rainfall. This has led to flash flood emergencies there and along the Guadalupe River. The river at Hunt, TX is approaching 30 feet, beyond the 1987 flood event at that gage.
Downstream in Kerrville, they aren’t expected to hit the 37 feet of 1987, but it still looks to be a top 3 flood. Meanwhile, San Angelo saw around 8 inches of rain, with over 12 inches just north of the city.
Some of the pictures and stories from along some of these rivers, particularly the Guadalupe are pretty awful. We are hopeful that the warnings were received in time and that the human toll from this event will be minimal.
Ty Matt ⚘
Does that mean that both the Eyewall & SCW will move to substack on Monday?
Nope! Nothing is changing with SCW! That will stay as is. The Eyewall will still host all our content for those that want to keep coming here. But if you want to support this site and get emails, it will be through Substack.
Sounds good!!
Why would what other people post on Substack matter? If you don’t like what other people post don’t read it. You guys have inserted some real political bias into your writing. It’s your right but I sure enjoyed your writing more when you weren’t doing that.
It’s not about that. For some people, enabling a platform for generally hate-filled speech is a red line they’re unwilling to cross. That’s not exactly political bias; it’s a legitimate concern, and it’s one we shared. But we determined this was the best path forward for now. We’ll reassess as needed. Sorry you feel that our honest, fact-based comments are “some real political bias.”
Hi Matt,
If you could, would you mind responding to my comment regarding your post on the eyewall post about the BBB cutting NOAA funding. I’m really trying to understand more how we can be less reliable on the influences of whomever holds the chair behind the resolute desk.
Thanks!
Hey Bill…to my knowledge, the recently passed legislation has nothing in it to further cut NOAA or NWS. It’s the next budget that’s a risk later this year. We should continue to keep this a government-run service, so it’s really on Congress at this point to ensure things get done. So my best advice is to contact and continue to contact your representatives in Congress.
Was the Central Texas flooding predicted? If not, does this event portend anything for the Houston area?