Flood threat persists in Texas as Edouard weakens to a tropical depression

CNN

By Meteorologists Briana Waxman, Chris Dolce

(CNN) — The fifth named storm of the El Niño-stunted Atlantic hurricane season has weakened to a tropical depression, but is still dumping heavy rain on parts of Texas and Louisiana after making landfall Tuesday afternoon near the two states’ shared border on the Gulf Coast.

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Up to 10 inches of rain have fallen in some locations in southeast Texas since Edouard made landfall near Johnson Bayou in neighboring Louisiana just after 2 p.m. Tuesday. The storm swept across the Beaumont metro area after coming ashore with sustained winds of 60 mph.

Edouard strengthened before reaching the coast but avoided the worst-case scenario of rapidly intensifying into a hurricane. Its small size also limited the reach of its strongest winds.

Here’s the latest:

• Edouard weakened to a tropical depression Tuesday night, with sustained winds of 35 mph. All coastal tropical storm warnings have been discontinued, though gusty winds could continue near Edouard’s center through the early morning hours.
• Power is out for more than 70,000 homes and businesses across six Texas counties, according to PowerOutage.com.
• Heavy rain continues to spread across southeastern Texas, and Houston is under a flood watch until 7 p.m. CT. Storm totals of 3 to 7 inches are expected from the upper Texas coast into east-central Texas, with isolated totals up to 15 inches.
• A Level 3 of 4 threat of flooding rain continues overnight into early Wednesday morning for a part of southeast Texas, including Beaumont and Port Arthur. A small portion of southeast Texas is under this threat level on Wednesday during the day too, and river flooding remains possible.
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott activated the state’s Emergency Operations Center to prepare for the storm’s impacts. More than 1,500 response personnel have been mobilized, along with aircraft, swift water rescue boats and high-water vehicles.

More rain before Edouard is done

Edouard is weakening rapidly as it moves over land, but the heavy rain it continues to drop poses an ongoing threat.

Much of southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana, from Houston to Lake Charles, Louisiana, is at risk for flash flooding through early Wednesday. The bull’s-eye shifts north later Wednesday morning from Houston and College Station to just south of Dallas.

Polk County has received the most rain so far, with radar estimates of 7 to 10 inches. Those totals could continue climbing as Edouard moves slowly northwest.

Torrential rainfall rates of 2 inches per hour or higher will be more than enough to cause flash flooding, especially on roads. Storm totals of 3 to 7 inches are expected from the upper Texas coast into east-central Texas, with up to 15 inches possible in isolated spots, according to the National Weather Service in Houston.

The city has been preparing for flooding by staging high water rescue vehicles and lowering the water level in Lake Houston, Ruth Tovar, spokesperson for the Houston Office of Emergency Management, told CNN.

Far southwestern Louisiana could receive 2 to 4 inches.

Edouard will die out over eastern Texas by Wednesday night. The storm’s leftover moisture could fuel scattered storms in eastern Texas on Thursday, but the flood threat should diminish.

El Niño is bossing hurricane season

Another short-lived storm fits with what the 2026 Atlantic season has delivered so far due to a strengthening and potentially record-breaking El Niño.

The 2026 Atlantic hurricane season’s activity is running just 11% of average as of August 30, according to one measure.

The most recent storm, Dolly, fell apart in the open Atlantic on August 28 after lasting just 24 hours. Cristobal disintegrated just as quickly in the northern Atlantic on August 13. The other two storms, Arthur and Bertha, had brief shelf lives in the Gulf in June and July, respectively.

The Atlantic season’s first hurricane is three weeks late compared to the average. It’s the longest the Atlantic has gone without a hurricane since 2022, when Danielle formed on September 2.

The Atlantic’s latest first hurricane happened on September 11, according to satellite-assisted records dating to 1966. Hurricanes Gustav in 2002 and Humberto in 2013 hold a tie for that record.

September is the typical peak of Atlantic hurricane season thanks to a combination of more favorable weather ingredients.

The most basic building block is warmer water temperatures, which peak in September after basking in summer’s heat, and provide fuel for storms to form and strengthen.

Lower wind shear, aka tropical-system kryptonite, is the other big ingredient. Wind shear involves changes in wind speed and direction at different levels of the atmosphere, and it can rip apart anything from budding tropical systems to fully developed hurricanes.

But this year’s El Niño has made wind shear unusually strong and widespread in the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean. That has stifled storm chances and ripped apart storms like Dolly.

It’s also the main reason forecasters have called for a muted season overall.

But that’s no reason to ignore the rest of hurricane season completely. Storms can still find windows of opportunity to form and become a threat, even in an overall subdued season.

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CNN’s Kate S. Petersen and Meteorologists Dakota Smith, Tyler Ory and Mary Gilbert contributed to this report.