{"id":233693,"date":"2026-04-03T16:25:06","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T16:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/233693\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T16:25:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T16:25:06","slug":"hail-tornado-threat-targeting-south-texas-in-latest-forecast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/233693\/","title":{"rendered":"Hail, tornado threat targeting South Texas in latest forecast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meteorologists expect the hail threat to target several counties along the border and in the\u00a0ranchlands, while potentially \u201cexcessive\u201d rainfall is expected across parts of the Rio Grande Valley<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsolated severe thunderstorms may affect\u00a0Zapata, Jim Hogg, and Starr Counties on Saturday due to the approach of a cold front,\u201d the National Weather Service said in an emailed weather advisory on Friday, April 3.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main threats will be damaging winds, large hail, locally heavy rainfall, cloud-to-ground lightning, and an isolated tornado,\u201d\u00a0NWS further said.<\/p>\n

Starr and Zapata counties lie along the Rio Grande in between the more populous cities of the Valley and Laredo. Jim Hogg County lies about 60 miles east of Laredo. Forecasters say that hail the size of quarters may occur within the ranchland counties, with isolated severe thunderstorms producing winds as strong as 50 miles per hour.<\/p>\n

\u201cLightning, along with the wind, may cause neighborhood-level to community-level (power) outages,\u201d the\u00a0NWS said.<\/p>\n

In the rest of the Valley, the cold front is expected to push through<\/a> the more populated regions late Saturday night into Easter Sunday morning.
\u201cThere is a medium to high (50-90%) chance of rainfall across much of Deep South Texas this weekend, with the best chances Saturday night through Easter Sunday night,\u201d officials said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome locations could exceed 3 inches of rainfall this weekend,\u201d which could spark pockets of flash flooding.<\/p>\n

The National Weather Service predicts that the \u201cmost likely\u201d rainfall amounts will vary between 1.5 to 2.5 inches regionally. Additionally, the front will cause temperatures to plummet about 20 degrees \u2014 from \u201cabove average\u201d low- to mid-90s to a high of 70 degrees on Monday.<\/p>\n

The holiday front will be the first measurable amount of rain in months in the Valley. Ahead of the front, the National Weather service said the Valley\u2019s drought<\/a> had \u201cincreased to its worst levels in more than ten years.\u201d But this weekend\u2019s storm comes nearly a year to the day<\/a> after a devastating storm<\/a> ravaged the Valley last spring. The March 26-28, 2025 storm produced staggering amounts of rain \u2014 as much as 21 inches in spots \u2014 that caused weeks-long flooding through parts of Hidalgo and Cameron counties and resulted in the deaths of six people<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meteorologists expect the hail threat to target several counties along the border and in the\u00a0ranchlands, while potentially \u201cexcessive\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2320,820,55116,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-233693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-mysasotx","9":"tag-mysastaff","10":"tag-mysaweather","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-texas-headlines","13":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}