I haven't seen water quite this high around here ever.

It literally took me 2 hours to get from 2nd and Business 83 to my insurance office in San Juan. 4:20pm to 6:20pm. Nuts.



The Shrine.

Just incredible and heartbreaking flood videos coming out of Reynosa MEX #inundacionpic.twitter.com/XUhvZPu0aMpic.twitter.com/OBoMYxGwQ0pic.twitter.com/TR1U8tB2Sd

— Storm News Now (@StormNewsNow) March 27, 2025

Got 4.5" overnight and another 5" today between 4:50 and 7:50 pm. Dumped the gauge because it was full. Let's see how much more I get tonight. Its dumping again.

It seems that over the last 15 or so years the separation between the 2 countries has grown so very much. As a kid down here the local media, both print and TV/Radio, would carry a lot more stories about the goings on in both Reynosa and Matamoros. Now, nada for the most part. Thus, the tremendous damage across the river isn't mentioned much.

The growth of both of the cities mentioned above in the last 30 years has been incredible. I wanna say Matamoros has grown like 2.5X and Reynosa like 3.5 times or more. Matamoros was historically about the twice the size of Reynosa for like a century. Reynosa now has over 1mm residents and even more if you count the number including the municipality limits of Rio Bravo and Diaz Ordaz.

The flooding in Reynosa is off the charts bad and if there is ever a big time hurricane the disaster might end up being one of the, if not the, worst that the country of Mexico has ever seen. There is nowhere for a ton of water to go and so many of the natural runoffs, resacas, and arroyos have been filled in, paved over, and built on. It will likely take 4 to 6 weeks for all the rain runoff to clear out of Reynosa from this storm.

Channel 4 is projecting up to 18" in some places in Harlingen.

That was the 24 hour total

15 - 18" measured pretty consistently across Harlingen. Here's an overhead of Harlingen Country Club this morning. At least the third time since 2008 that a lot of the houses have gotten flooded there.

[url=https://ibb.co/5W4xXCzD][/url]

Stuart Place Rd looking south from Wilson Rd.
Country club on the left.

[url=https://ibb.co/BKdBt9K3][/url]

Holy crap! We played there for the 1st time a few weeks ago. Sad.

{12:43 pm 3/28/25} This is ground truth on the significant rain event in the Rio Grande Valley for the last 48 hours. The highest rainfall total (ground reading) is 18.7" in Lozano (near Rio Hondo).#RGVWX #TXWX pic.twitter.com/9k3DQ652rE

— KRGV First Warn 5 (@KRGV_Weather) March 28, 2025

Going to be uninsurable at some point. After Dolly you'd have thought they would address the flooding issues in Palm Valley. Nope. Just flood everyone every time we get heavy rain.

Oh man, I thought it was over

Harlingen getting some more. Heavy rain for last 45 minutes and now a weather advisory pic.twitter.com/GNslEyzrb0

— Mark Reagan (@RGVReagan) March 28, 2025

carl spacklers hat said:

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Going to be uninsurable at some point. After Dolly you'd have thought they would address the flooding issues in Palm Valley. Nope. Just flood everyone every time we get heavy rain.

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There's been some big bond issues passed and a lot of work done in the past 10+ years. There's sooooo much left to do though.

I have been campaigning on drainage for the last four years in South Texas. Basically, we need a drainage project on a New Orleans scale encompassing Hidalgo, Cameron, and Willacy Counties.

Probably 5X the cost of the 2nd Causeway...

McAllen Country Club got 13 inches of rain. Only 9 holes open tomorrow.

I'm a member at HCC. Drainage District #5 and the City of Palm Valley just completed concreting a drainage ditch that runs through 4 of the holes at the course. It was already a deep grassed ditch, but they concreted the bottom. Supposed to move more water from Palm Valley, which is essentially the neighborhood around the golf course. To be fair, there's nothing that could feasibly financially be built to drain that much rain in that short of time. But, it impacted the look and playability of that part of the course, and us golfers weren't too happy about it and were skeptical of its efficacy. An engineer who wasn't connected to the project said before it was built: "instead of having 3 feet of water in their houses they'll only have one foot."

Yeah I'm guessing that's why the hole on the back 9 was a temporary par 3.

I just watched a channel 4 piece on a Weslaco neighborhood that got 21 inches. Terrible stuff.

https://www.valleycentral.com/news/heartbreaking-rescues-underway-as-historic-flooding-hits-south-texas-border/

Valley mosquitoes right now pic.twitter.com/xPfrT4wguD

— Mark Reagan (@RGVReagan) March 28, 2025

Kunkle for Congress TX-34 said:

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I have been campaigning on drainage for the last four years in South Texas. Basically, we need a drainage project on a New Orleans scale encompassing Hidalgo, Cameron, and Willacy Counties.

Probably 5X the cost of the 2nd Causeway...

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I think many of the drainage/flooding problems in the RGV are almost insurmountable, except for certain specific areas. Reason being is that so many of the natural pathways or flows of water to the river have been altered, built upon, reduced, and changed. There is too much value in much of that land nowadays to completely repurpose it, condemn it or eminent domain it.

Some time in the mid to late 90's I got to see a booklet/pamphlet that showed superimposed images of various parts of the RGV at their current state on aerial photos of the flooding from Beulah, it was pretty scary. This was done for a some real estate agents that were working with big box stores and real estate companies/developers at the time of the big RGV expansion of large stores and commercial properties. I guess they were trying to avoid building or buying in flood prone areas. It was eyeopening to see all the development that had been done on areas that flooded harshly back then.

I don't think the old drainage plans, which I understand were formulated in the 20's and 30's, ever contemplated the true development of the RGV and the population explosion that took place, and is taking place. There are parts of the RGV that flood now that used to not flood and vice versa. For all the wonderful things about deep coastal STX, there are a bunch of issues with flat land flooding and lack of drainage.