This week’s devastating Texas floods capped an exceptionally wet spring for the Lone Star State that has effectively ended its yearslong drought. Eighty-two percent of Texas was drought-free as of May 26, up from just 11% a year earlier, according to U.S. Drought Monitor estimates released by the government Thursday. None of the state remained in severe drought. May is already the wettest month in recorded Texas history, averaging 7.54 inches of rain, beating the record of 6.66 inches set in June 2004, according to state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. Some counties north of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area have received more than 20 inches. Formerly shrunken lakes and reservoirs are brimming with water—to the point where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was strategically releasing water from many to reduce flooding, even before this week’s torrential rains. And the rainy […]