Monday, August 27, 2001
Page 14A
Rain falls here, there, but not everywhere
By Joshua Benton
Staff Writer
If, as Linus used to say on the funny pages, the rain falls on the just and the unjust, their numbers are pretty unevenly sprinkled across the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
While welcome rains came to North Texas on Sunday, they picked their spots, giving some blocks a pleasant dousing and leaving others stone dry.
“It’s pretty much splattered randomly around,” said Steve McCauley, a meteorologist for WFAA-TV (Channel 8).
The rain came courtesy of the remains of a cool front that slid into the region Sunday. Fort Worth got more precipitation than Dallas, but areas farther north, in Collin and Grayson counties, had occasional thunder and lightning thrown in as well, along with isolated pea-sized hail. Small-scale storms were expected to last through Tuesday in parts of the region, although nothing too severe.
“It’s nothing really nasty, just some people getting some beneficial rain,” said Chad Pettera, a forecaster with WeatherData, Inc., a private forecasting agency in Wichita, Kan.
As of 6:30 p.m., only a trace of rain had fallen at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, but two to three inches had been reported in the Sherman area.
“It almost seems abnormal to see rain after you’ve been blistering for a long time,” said Bill Thornhill, a park ranger at Eisenhower State Park in Denison, where it was raining lightly late Sunday afternoon. “As parched as the plants and grass are, it’s nice to see.
“It’s going to take more than this to change the lake levels, but we’ll take what we can get,” he said.
The rain cooled temperatures about 10 degrees Sunday afternoon. Sunday’s high was 88.
If your area didn’t get rain, just wait. While areas north of Dallas-Fort Worth got most of the attention Sunday, places south of Interstate 20 are more likely to get wet Monday, Mr. McCauley said.
Precipitation could remain in the area through Tuesday, but after that forecasters predict that the region will stay dry until at least Friday.