Storms douse streets, football, parks

By Amanda Rogers

Mansfield Record

Storms rolled through Mansfield this week, raining out high school football games, flooding roads and parks, and boosting the annual rain total. And the storms aren’t over yet.

“There were two reports from Mansfield, 2.79 inches in one and 3.05 inches in another overnight Friday night,” said Daniel Huckaby, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth.

The ground was already saturated from 4.31 inches Wednesday to Thursday, leading to flooding and the closure of Katherine Rose Memorial Park, 303 N. Walnut Creek Drive, and parts of the Walnut Creek Linear Trail, according to the Mansfield Police Department. The parks reopened Sunday after the water receded, despite another 3 inches of rain Saturday night and Sunday.

Flooding also caused the closure of the 300 block of North Walnut Creek Drive, Retta Road, North Street and West Broad Street at County Road 528 on Saturday.

Rain earlier in the month brought the October total to almost 13 inches, Huckaby said, approximately a third of the total rainfall this year, which is 33 inches. Normal rainfall for October is 4.78 inches, Huckaby said. The area is just ahead of the 32 inches that normally fall by this time of the year.

“We’ve been in drought conditions for a couple of years,” Huckaby said. “This will certainly help. So we got a third of our year’s rain in October. It can happen this time of the year. May is often the wettest month of the year, October is the second wettest.”

Storms forced rain delays and eventually led to high school football games being called at R.L. Anderson and Vernon Newsom stadiums Friday night. The rain also forced some Halloween events inside this weekend and doused the Mansfield Farm & Cottage Market on Saturday morning.

And the rain isn’t done yet, Huckaby said.

The cold could put a damper on trick-or-treating on Halloween and gardening, Huckaby said.

“We may have our first freeze of the season Wednesday morning,” he said. “We will have a few days to fine-tune the forecast. On Monday, the high temperatures will be in the 40s.”

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