Southeastern Texas under rare high flood risk, rescues reported as Edouard dumps over 20 inches of rain
By Meteorologists Briana Waxman, Chris Dolce, and CNN’s Kate S. Petersen
(CNN) — Tropical Depression Edouard has already swamped parts of eastern Texas and now the region has been upgraded to a rare “high risk” for flooding with more rain on the way.
🌧️ In the storm’s path? Track it, get local insights from meteorologists and more, only in the CNN Weather app ⛈️
The high risk is just northwest of Beaumont, Texas, where extreme rainfall has resulted in “considerable to locally catastrophic flash flooding,” the Weather Prediction Center said.
At least one location in this area saw a month’s worth of rain fall in a single hour early Wednesday morning. Another 6 inches or more of rain is possible in portions of eastern Texas into Thursday.
A flash flood emergency — the highest level of flood warning from the National Weather Service — was in effect in the high-risk area much of Wednesday morning. It included parts of Hardin and Tyler counties, where an estimated 10 to 21 inches of rain has fallen, according to the National Weather Service. The emergency-level warning expired late in the morning, but the significant flood threat persists.
Roughly a dozen motorists were rescued after driving into water on roadways in Hardin County, according to a county emergency management news release. Two people were also rescued from a home that had flooded. Around 10 structures were damaged by fallen trees and limbs, and one commercial building sustained “extensive roof damage,” according to the release.
To the northeast, in neighboring Polk County, authorities helped five people leave a mobile home surrounded by water, County Judge Sydney Murphy told CNN. The five included three children and a baby, CNN affiliate KPRC-TV reported. Floodwater was around waist-deep in the area after a nearby creek overflowed.
Murphy issued a local disaster declaration Wednesday due to Edouard’s impacts.
Level 4 of 4 high risk forecasts are a big deal. They are issued on fewer than 4% of days per year on average but are responsible for more than 80% of all flood-related damage and 36% of all flood-related deaths, WPC research shows.
Flood watches are posted for more than 7 million people in eastern Texas, including from Houston and Beaumont to southeast of Dallas with more heavy rain possible through Wednesday night.
There have been reports of downed trees and fallen limbs along with downed or tangled power lines across multiple counties. Power is out for more than 59,000 homes and businesses across eastern Texas, according to PowerOutage.com.
Most of the outages are tied to strong winds Edouard unleashed Tuesday afternoon when it made landfall near the Texas-Louisiana border. Wind gusts reached 60 to 90 mph in the area, according to preliminary reports from the National Weather Service.
Edouard’s winds have relaxed since it pushed ashore, but wind advisories are in effect in eastern Texas with wind gusts up to 40 mph possible through Wednesday afternoon.
Edouard will finally die out over eastern Texas by Thursday morning. The storm’s leftover moisture could fuel scattered storms in eastern Texas on Thursday.
The flood threat should eventually diminish, but any areas that were deluged on Wednesday will be prone to renewed flooding given even moderate rainfall. A Level 3 of 4 risk of flooding rain is in place Thursday around the Palestine, Texas, area, just northwest of Wednesday’s high risk.
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 September 1, according to one measure .
Dolly fell apart in the open Atlantic on August 28 after 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 more than 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.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN Meteorologists Dakota Smith, Tyler Ory and Mary Gilbert contributed to this report.
