Recent Rains Could Spare Texas from Scorching Summer

Spring showers that have fallen across Texas this year, and more rain expected this week will likely spare the Lone Star State a second straight record-setting summer of heat and drought.

Texas got an estimated 8.5 inches of rain from March through May. That's more than three times the amount recorded during the comparable period of 2011, when the state endured its driest year on record.

Although parts of West Texas are still battling drought, weather officials say this spring has left East Texas and most of the state poised for lower temperatures and improved rainfall chances compared to last summer.

This is could news for famers and their crops , fewer brown lawns and less strain on a power grid that was tested last year by millions of Texans trying to escape record heat waves.