A mix of significant hail and rainfall on Monday evening caused the closure of the Fort Stockton Independent School District campuses on Tuesday and flooding at Pecos County Memorial Hospital. The National Weather Service in Midland reported that Fort Stockton received 2-3 inches of precipitation during the rare weather event.

Scott, a meteorologist with the NWS in Midland, gave context to the storm and why it caused flooding in many areas locally.

“One of the things we were noticing and why the flooding could have been so substantial, it wasn’t just the veracity of the rain. It was also the fact that there was so much hail that was falling during that timeframe that it probably had a lot of blockage in a lot of drainage areas,” he said. “That caused everything to back up and then it just snowballs from there.”

The meteorologist added that the event was setup by elevated levels of moisture in the atmosphere that day – something that is extremely rare for this time of year.

“In general, an event like that is fairly rare. We don’t see hailstorms like that very often in that location,” Scott explained. “I think the one thing that was the kicker was how much moisture was in the atmosphere during that day. It was approaching the 90th percentile in climatology for the amount of precipitable water. The area was at 1.3 inches, which is a lot for this time of year.”

The extensive accumulation caused by the rainfall and blockage of drainage areas caused flooding at Fort Stockton High School and Apache Elementary.

FSISD Superintendent Dr. Gabriel Zamora informed local media and the public of the district’s closure on Tuesday just after 7:30 p.m. on Monday – an hour and a half after the storm started in Fort Stockton and shortly after it left the area.

“I decided to cancel it 35-45 minutes after it started coming down, as soon as I went out to some campuses and saw what was going on. I wanted to give people as much of a heads up as much as I could because I know some people count on the school for daycare,” Zamora noted. “I didn’t need people to pull an all nighter, potentially hurt themselves or slip and with electricity to get our campuses prepared for Tuesday.”

The Fort Stockton ISD staff and hired contractors were able to act quickly at the campuses on Tuesday and prevent significant damage.

As a result, campuses across the district reopened on Wednesday for all students.

Fixtures and renovations that will be made this week include the replacement of carpet in areas that were affected by flooding in the old wing of Apache and roofing leaks that impacted numerous campuses.

“There were new leaks that were identified, and we started a share drive to consolidate the fixtures needed by campus. The ones that were impacted the most were Apache and high school, but none of them came out completely clean,” he said. “We have a tremendous maintenance staff and they were able to get the campuses prepared for school within a day.”

Fort Stockton ISD will absorb the cost of fixtures via fund balance despite having insurance coverage of all campuses. Zamora said that each campus has a $150,000-$200,000 deductible, which is well below the costs associated with storm damage.

At Pecos County Memorial Hospital, the community rallied to ensure the safety of patients and the facilities that provide healthcare to those in need.

PCMH CEO Betsy Briscoe reported that over 95 community members, including employees of the hospital, city and county staff, and students at the Fort Stockton ISD helped clean up flooded areas.

“We want to express our sincerest appreciation to our community and our PCMH employees. We had over 95 people, pumping, pushing, and mopping up the flood water last night. You all are amazing and we are truly blessed,” Briscoe said on the PCMH Facebook page.

At Tuesday’s commissioners meeting, Briscoe added context to the damage done to PCMH.

“Basically, pretty much every patient room had water seeping in under the foundation and coming into the patient rooms, some of it all the way into the hallways,” she said. “It took us a couple of hours to get most of the water pushed back out. We moved all of the patients out of the rooms. Surgery was not flooded so patients were moved to that area.”

The facility had fans set up to dry the floor as of Tuesday afternoon.

“Our brand-new flooring, a lot of it is going to have to be replaced,” Briscoe noted. “We did have to cancel a couple of surgeries (Tuesday morning) because we didn’t have time to get the rooms cleaned.”