The National Weather Service placed large parts of Texas that are home to more than 10 million people under a flash flood watch on Friday as storms were expected to drop as much as 15 inches of rain in some spots through the weekend.
Rains that have already hit parts of the state were expected to intensify over the weekend when moisture from monster Hurricane Patricia, which is threatening the Pacific coast of Mexico, meets with a storm system coming from the west over Texas, a forecaster with the U.S. National Weather said.
"We would have rain without it (Hurricane Patricia), but we are definitely going to have more rain because of it," said Nick Hampshire, with the U.S. National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio Forecast Office.
The flood watch stretches from the border with Mexico through San Antonio and into the Dallas area, a region where heavy rains and flooding in May killed more than 20 people and caused massive damage.
The two systems are expected to meet from Saturday morning and bring rains that last through Sunday, the weather service said.
Nearly 200 flights were canceled at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, one of the country's busiest, as of 10 a.m. CDT, according to tracking service FlightAware.com.
Storms pounded western Texas on Thursday night, causing floods that lifted mobile homes off their foundations in Rankin, about 300 miles northwest of Austin, and causing numerous road accidents in Abilene and Odessa.
Hurricane Patricia strengthened into one of the most powerful storms in history on Friday as it barreled toward Mexico's Pacific Coast, forcing resort hotels to evacuate guests and residents to stockpile supplies.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
