Houston experiences historic flooding
When it rains, it pours
One of the nation’s largest cities experienced what meteorologists are calling a one-hundred-year flood.
Late last night, three separate thunderstorm systems converged over Space City to form one incredibly nasty storm. For weeks Houston and other parts of the Lone Star State have been pelted with storm system after storm system, leaving large swaths of affected areas waterlogged and unable to absorb more rainfall.
Leaving two dead, lightning storms and torrential rainfall pounded Houston for most of the night. Some parts of the city, particularly southwest Houston, saw more than ten inches of rain in as little as five hours. Courts and schools were closed Tuesday with much of the city still unnavigable.
RAW VIDEO: This is just some of the incredible footage taken by Skyeye HD of the flooding across the city of Houston this morning.WATCH MORE HERE –> http://abc13.co/1FN6b0f#HoustonFlood Photo Gallery –> http://abc13.co/1HHk02n
Posted by ABC 13 Houston on Tuesday, May 26, 2015
This is how it began:
Blamed for multiple apartment fires, the lightning show continued throughout the duration of the storm.
Real-time lightning strike map of Houston right now via @dsilverman http://t.co/YvW5fC8FZP #houwx #hounews pic.twitter.com/LiCz8IAuRi
— Martin Hajovsky (@MartinHajovsky) May 26, 2015
According to the National Weather Service, some areas received more than 10 inches of rain:
530 AM: Here's a look at where some of the heaviest rain fell overnight for Southeast TX: #txwx #houwx #bcswx
Posted by US National Weather Service Houston-Galveston Texas on Tuesday, May 26, 2015
ABC local news took the following footage:
Footage taken by a drone captured some of the devastation in southwest Houston early Tuesday morning:
Houston’s shopping Mecca, The Galleria, flooded leaving employees stranded inside:
Wow. Galleria Mall parking garage flooding. #HoustonFlood pic.twitter.com/hu3jWY5LsF
— Lily Jang (@KHOULily) May 26, 2015
Basketball fans were stranded in the Toyota Center after the Rockets’ win in the Western Conference Finals fourth game, as just about every road out of downtown was under water. Houston Rockets player Dwight Howard stuck around for a while. The Houston Chronicle reported:
Most Rockets players headed for the exits, too, but Howard opted to wait it out after hearing from friends about treacherous road conditions.
“There’s no need to try to push it,” Howard said. “One of my friends just hit me up and said he’s stuck on the highway now. I don’t think it’s smart for anybody to try to be out on this weather.”
Howard waved to fans as he stayed on the court, but he was getting antsy for some entertainment as he waited.
“They’re showing the Weather Channel right now,” he said. “They need to put on a movie or something.”
#KHOU #rockets I have never seen this before! pic.twitter.com/Gi08FQqam2
— Matt Musil (@KHOUSportsMatt) May 26, 2015
#KHOU #rockets Toyota Center now piping in Weather Channel reports pic.twitter.com/12Zab8pOyc
— Matt Musil (@KHOUSportsMatt) May 26, 2015
I’m a native Houstonian and Houston is still my home break. Thankfully, we’re high and dry. No loss, no damage, no flooding. Leaving home today was completely out of the question though. My heart goes out to those affected by last night’s sudden and awful storm. Meteorologists predict more rain this afternoon or evening, but we’re hoping and praying Houston gets a reprieve.
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Comments
California looks to Houston and sighs.
We can make them SUCH a deal on a few acre-feet…!!!
“One of the nation’s largest cities experienced what meteorologists are calling a one-hundred-year flood.”
Gotta watch out when the meterorologists call it a “one-hundred-year” flood. Here in Western Washington, we had one in 2007.
Then we had another one in 2009.
Praying for safety of all those affected in Texas.
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Stevie+Ray+Vaughan+Flooding&FORM=HDRSC3#view=detail&mid=9FF956161D12F376A6FF9FF956161D12F376A6FF
Yeh. That NEVER happens down heeah.
As one who lost two vehicles and everything on the first level of our house to Allison in 2001, and whose job place ( a major medical center in Houston) experienced millions in losses from that event, I am failing to understand what they mean by a “100 year storm”.
They have 100-year floods at least every twenty years on the Guadalupe.
A hundred year flood means they used to think this occurred once every 100 years or so.
Now they think it is either a mistake, or climate change. They don’t like to say climate change, because climate change is supposed to be global warming, which actually doesn’t matter.
Apparently we are adding alot of dihydrogen monoxide to the atmosphere, and carbon dioxide perhaps also causes more evaporation, and rain may be falling less often, but in greater amounts. It never rains but it pours, as the saying goes. But it really is hard to tell.
The “hundred year flood” is a statistical term for a rainfall event of an intensity and duration such that it has a 1% probability of ocurring any given year, based on past history. On average, that’s one in a hundred years. But it’s only a probability, and isn’t predictive in the sense that they actually occur at that prescribed interval.
The idiots who designed the University of Houston Law Center Library built it UNDERGROUND.
In Houston. Texas. Where we don’t have basements because…water table.
It has several levels…all below ground. Alica destroyed whole irreplaceable collections that were in the lower levels.
You can’t fix stupid.
If you look at photos of the Houston Medical Center from 50 years ago as compared to today the amount of concrete that has replaced soil is astounding. Streets become canals and rivers. Many of the Med Center’s physical plants are below grade – or at least were, as are many of their research centers.
Rags, remember Hurricane Ike a few years ago. I think it was Ben Taub Hospital had its records division in the basement. Not too smart.
It’s a constant marvel! Medical records are one thing, but a unique collection of legal opinions and writings (originals) by someone as singular as Judge John R. Brown is another.
It should have been on the top floor of one of the tallest towers in Houston. Hell, even the South Texas School Of Law. Responsibility is more important than chest-thumping.
In addition to Houston, please keep the other areas in your prayers and support. The central Texas area got pounded. Wimberley was all but washed away. The Blanco river gained 26 feet in one hour. It normally hits flood stage at 13 feet, but crested at 40 feet. A lot of big weather in a lot of areas.
I am reminded of this photograph of a sign outside a Texas church:
http://www.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000xylN.fovWyA/s/800/533/Texas-Wildfire-Dyer-Mill-Fire028.jpg
This appears to be an annual occurrence:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/05/29/heres-what-happened-after-christians-begged-god-to-bring-rain-to-water-starved-texas-city/
Be very careful what you pray for, as G-d may answer your prayers.
We’re on higher ground, and we’re OK.
But the creeks within ten miles of us are full. At least one road I know of is closed because it’s on lower ground and the fields nearby are flooded. I was able to do the day’s business and come home in one piece, thankfully.
The Bayou area, though…
My heart goes out to those dealing with the floods in TX and OK. In 1999 Hurricane Floyd and then Flood Floyd devastated our area (eastern NC). Floyd was our second hurricane in two weeks (Dennis). 57 dead, 6 billion in damages. 8 were killed within 5 miles of Casa Hawkins on the Tar River. They’d been driven up into the house, out a hole pounded thru the roof, then into two boats too small for raging flood water. Whole family lost. As levees broke one after another, we’d get surges that were devastating. I could not get a boat out in time, so I storm-rigged it nosed up on shore as best I could. Tied to my dock with 8 ft lines – but the water rose over 12. Cut boat loose before the cleats could get yanked out by the leaning boat. Then I had to keep moving it around my back yard as the water level lowered, rose, lowered, etc., as levees were breaking after becoming water-sodden and weak. For 4 days military choppers and helicopters were overhead constantly, staged 2 miles away so they were always treetop level, 100 ft above. F**king awesome, that part was.
Hang tight, be safe, and find your shovels first.
I would say it is a 15 year flood especially when one goes back to Tropical Storm Alison in 2001
this type of flooding is not unusual for Houston which is basically flat with very little topography. the area is largely developed and there is very little ground to absorb the rain.
Amazing flooding after a period of drought….
In 2013, USA Today, among many major news outlets to focus on the issue, published a special report on how global warming was exacerbating the supposedly historic drought in Texas and that “likely do more damage in the future.” Well, that drought is amazingly now officially over less than two years later.
This, in a remotely logical world, would leave only two options: 1) Global Warming has been fixed; or 2) The report was a piece of garbage using a natural cycle to promote a political agenda. I asked the reporter via Twitter if she intended on retracting the piece now that the supposedly global warming-caused drought is over so incredibly quickly, but shockingly I got no response.
An alternative view:
Now that the historic drought in Texas, which was exacerbated by Global Warming, is over, We can all congratulate President Barack Obama for having fixed Global Warming during his tenure in office.
Let’s see him deny that.
You fail Prog Logic. When things go up, it’s because of Global Warming, but when things go down it is ALSO because of Global Warming. See, you just pull things directly out of your ass and claim they’re all because of Global Warming, and then you point to an ensemble of probabilistic models that have NEVER been right, either individually or collectively as your “proof.” SCIENCE! And if anyone disagrees with you then you shout them down and ostracize them. THAT is how Prog Logic works. Get with the program Komrade. FORWARD!!
A very dangerous situation. Even in a relatively flat area moving water exerts an amazing amount of force. People often don’t realize just how much force.
When I was growing up I spent summers with relatives who owned a farm on the Mississippi River some 80 miles above the point where it stops being navigable to commercial traffic. I was always amazed at the power of what, at that point in its course is still a small river.
One year the river utterly destroyed a concrete blockhouse my uncle had built as a shelter if a thunderstorm came up while we were fishing from shore. It had been a three sided affair set into a slope some ten feet from the normal waterline, with about a foot showing above the soil line. The flood had ripped off the eight by eight foot poured concrete slab roof and its far edge was several feet downstream of where the shelter had stood. Individual concrete blocks from the walls were scatted, one as far as 50 feet downstream.
If flood water can toss re-bar and concrete imagine what it can do to the sheet metal and fiberglass of a car.
We got plastered again in the pre-dawn morning. Probably another two or three inches up here, north of Houston. I’ve been up since four with my crazy Golden.
I drove about an hour-and-a-half to get over points that would normally take me about 20 minutes because of flooded creeks.
But still and all, I’ve seen it worse.
If you mean Golden Retriever, the adjective ‘crazy’ becomes unnecessary. (Yes, we have one).
Why is that Spring/Woodlands are getting the brunt of this? My sewer didn’t even back up and it always does in heavy rain. Weather is a funny thing.