by Meteorologist Lee Ringer
Tropical Storm Allison came ashore near Galveston on June 5, 2001. It was one of the earliest storms to ever hit the Texas coast. Just before landfall, the storm had sustained winds near 60mph,. but it was not the wind that caused the problems with this storm.
The storm initially dumped up to a foot of rain between Galveston and Houston. Then the storm slowly moved to the north where it became stationary for a couple of days over East Texas.
Even though most of our area is over 100 miles from the coast, Allison still caused problems for the Pineywoods. Many locations right here in East Texas reported up to a foot of rain or even more.
Here's a look at official rain totals from the storm:
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Pennington: 15.60"
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Crockett:14.56"
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Ratcliff:14.22"
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Weches: 11.35"
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Lovelady: 9.05"
The heavy rains caused an estimated $700,000 in damage to the City of Nacogdoches alone where apartment residents were flooded from their homes.
The storm eventually moved back to the south were it dumped even more rain for the Houston area, which led to major flooding.
After all was said and done, twenty-two people were killed by the storm and almost $4 billion in damage were reported in southeast Texas. That made Allison one of the costliest tropical storms ever.
