Over the past 24 hours, we have seen the forecasts upstream of Richmond slightly fail. As of this morning, the Brazos River in Hempstead is forecasted to peak around Gage 48.5 feet with San Felipe peaking around Gage 120.6 feet. This is about 2.1 feet lower in Hempstead and about 1.5 feet lower in San Felipe since yesterday’s update.
WGRFC 8:00 AM Brazos River at San Felipe (05/05/2019)
WGRFC 8:00 AM Brazos River at Hempstead (05/05/2019)
The forecast for Richmond is continuing to show the Brazos River rising through the forecast window and is currently forecasted to hit Gage 47.5 feet on Friday morning. Based on this morning’s forecasts, it appears that we will hit near Moderate Flood Stage (Gage 48.0 feet).
With the Brazos River rising to Minor Flood Stage, we are also continuing to monitor another round of storms hitting east Texas. With elevated river levels and saturated soils, additional rainfall will potentially keep us elevated for the next couple of weeks. Today we should have another warm, sunny day, but will be short lived as another round of severe weather begins late Monday night running through Tuesday. The NWS is showing the potential for much of the lower Brazos River Watershed receiving 1 to 2 inches of rainfall through Tuesday.
This wet pattern could continue through most of the week with the potential for a total rainfall amount between 4 to 8 inches over the next 7 days.
How this additional rainfall will impact the already rising Brazos River is unknown at the moment, so we encourage everyone to continue to monitor the forecasts by the WGRFC and visit the Fort Bend County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management website.
Flood Risk on the Bend 