we had saturday night into sunday morning. now we re starting to get into our major river flooding event, and also the problems with our dams and reservoirs holding too much water. that is now going to start cresting in the next two or three days. so we re getting new mandatory evacuations. and at the same time, we have tropical storm harvey that is starting to regenerate a little bit in the gulf, sending extremely heavy remain rates here up to the north here. so here is where the storm is located. it s easy to spot. it s just off the coast. and look at the bright red and yellow on the map here. these are new showers and thunderstorms that are forming right near the center, and that is sending this plume of very heavy rain right up into the south portion of houston. this is what we fear, rainfall rates are starting to increase to 1 to 3 inches an hour in this region. houston southwards. so those areas, the flooding is going to get worse before it gets better and it looks like some is g
where the bands set up and stay over houston this morning, that s the best chance to getting up there in the higher, crazier totals when the storm system stalls out. that s why we have the flash flood warnings, we have rainfall rates of two to three inches an hour that have set up a heavy band over the top of the city. then we will deal with the rivers. the rivers are now starting to slowly come up. they have been pretty dry in this region before the hurricane made land faum t. rivers are running slow. we got a little leeway. they can t hold this volume of water over the next couple days. these are all the rivers, they start up around austin an san antonio. they sthak out to the gulf. all of these rivers are projected to be a major flood stage. that map leaned you, alex, over there, the one with the purple dots on it. that is the flood projection map from the national weather service, that s a projection of how high the rivers will get. when it gets into the purple, it means main flo
morning, landfall and then still only be 100 miles from that location come tuesday, which is going to lead to incredible almost unheard of rainfall rates. this area saw thunderstorm allison dumped 40 inches of rain one spot near houston. it s not like it never happened before. that was a long time ago, killed 43 people and that s the flood of record. one of the long range computer models was pinpointing 10 to 15 inches from louisiana from san antonio to houston, anyone who has driven that, you realize how far and how much geography this is covering and you talk about major to historic flooding through the region possible into wednesday. here s one of my fears. we re going to have a storm now capable of knocking out power. before we were thinking weaker winds and people could ride it out in the homes. we ll have a lot of people without power that stay in their homes and this tremendous rainfall and the storm still lingering. not like the power crews can rush in following this storm. the
i ve gotten no indications that they re considering vetoing it, and again, i mean, they can count. they understand math, and i just can t imagine they re considering doing so. all right. let s get a check on your weather now with nbc meteorologist bill karins. bill, an ugly start for the mid-atlantic. the summer weekends are just ticking by. not many left. it s not going to be a pretty one in the mid-atlantic region. in the southeast on sunday it s not going to be that nice. we re starting off with flash flood watches. northern alabama, west virginia, southern pennsylvania right through the nation s capital, maryland and delaware, not too bad yet. we re just starting to see some of the increased rainfall rates now in areas of kentucky. some storms are popping up in west virginia. this will continue through the day to fill in. we ll get more rainfall. let me give you the timing on it. this is at 8:00 a.m. this morning. there s that rain and starting to head from roanoke all the wa
forecast crest of just under 42 feet through the course of the day today. that is well above flood stage. similar conditions expected across the mississippi river, the further south you travel, that will continue to crest from saturday, being today, through the end of the weekend on sunday. look at the showers responsible for the flooding. there were two storm systems across the center u.s. that brought the inczyzent rainfall. it continues to move eastward, and we saw that rain inundate the mid-atlantic states with 19 daily rainfall rates set across the east coast. i ve got to touch on this, this is important. new images coming in now from the world s busiest airport right here where cnn headquarters is located. atlanta s hartsfield jackson national airport was struck by an ef0 tornado. this is from thursday night. these are images coming out of the atlanta region. you ve got to see the funnel cloud. you see it just in the distance