Halloween began with frightening weather in Central and South Texas, as heavy downpours led to numerous rescues, including one by helicopter Thursday after a couple’s SUV was swept away by floodwaters and left them desperately clinging to trees for hours.
Since storms began Wednesday, up to 15 inches of rain in some areas swelled rivers and washed out low-water crossings in a swath of more than 100 miles around Austin, Texas, according to the National Weather Service Austin-San Antonio office.
“It looks to be one of the worst areas with the heaviest rainfall totals,” said NWS meteorologist Steve Smart said as storms began moving to the east Thursday.
The Texas flooding was part of a major front that the National Weather Service said would produce severe thunderstorms and possibly tornadoes from the Great Lakes south to the Gulf Coast.
The bad weather prompted some cities and churches in the region to consider postponing Halloween trick-or-treating.
No injuries had been reported but entire Austin neighborhoods near swollen creeks were being evacuated. Residents in some of the more hilly areas were forced to sandbag their doorsteps.
In one neighborhood southeast of Austin, the rains caused a creek that normally runs at about 7 feet to swell more than five times its normal size. It was expected to crest at a record 41 feet by Thursday afternoon before receding, Zeitler said.
Shelters were being set up at schools, community centers and churches for residents displaced by the storms. The floods closed down MetroRail service for northwest Austin for part of the morning commute.
The storm was partly caused by Hurricane Raymond, which dissipated in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday. Its remnants moved across the western United States, pulling heavy weather with them.
That combined with warm, humid, low-lying air from the Gulf of Mexico and cooler air at higher altitudes to produce the floods — a situation expected to return next week with more potential flooding from a tropical storm brewing in the same region, Zeitler said.
The storm system stretches from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast and carries heavy rain and strong winds. In Texas, Houston motorists also were slowed Thursday morning by heavy rain, which caused flooding in some areas.
Austin and its surrounding communities saw numerous rescues, officials said, but none like that in Buda, about 10 miles south of the capital city.
The last time many of these neighborhoods saw this level of flooding was in 1998, when massive floods killed more than two dozen people and caused $750 million worth of damage from Austin to San Antonio and beyond.
Thursday’s floods came just two weeks after the remnants of Tropical Storm Octave washed over Austin and caused massive flooding in the downtown area.
The dramatic helicopter rescue began around 4 a.m. Thursday, when emergency personnel received calls from people living near Little Bear Creek about somebody screaming for help, Buda Fire Department Chief Clay Huckaby said.
Crews spotted a man and his girlfriend in trees about 200 yards downstream from the roadway they’d been driving on in their SUV.
“The water was over the road by about 15 feet by the time we arrived at the scene. They were about 10 feet above the water line hanging from trees,” Huckaby said.
Fire Capt. Craig Odell says rescuers encouraged the pair to “hang on” until a helicopter arrived, because firefighters on land couldn’t reach them and all available boats were being used for other water rescues.
The man and woman, whose names were not released, estimated they were in the water about four hours before a rescuer was lowered in a harness and hoisted them to safety.
“They’re definitely very lucky,” Odell said.
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