We were there for Allison .. sounds like this is approaching those levels in some parts of town.

Hope everyone is OK.

Thanks for the well wishes. NW side is a mess. We've had at least 12 inches (south of Tomball along 249). One report of 20 inches at 290 and Huffmeister. The new Grand Parkway is a lake where it crosses under 2920.

We got our power back about 8:30am. It went out about 11:50 pm. But I have no internet service.

My pool is now a cement pond. I can't see the bottom even in the shallow end.

Rice was closed until noon today but the flash flood warning was just extended to 1PM for this area. Most of the highways are underwater in some areas, usually under overpasses. Attempted to go to work this morning but the feeder roads are underwater so you can't even get on 59.

Y'all be safe and stay out of underpasses.

As I mentioned to OCO as long as there is strong flow from the Gulf north to the system we stay almost dry. Once you go north of Texas City then you begin to hit the rain. For both Allison and the Memorial Day flood there was barely a drop of rain on Tiki. So far we have gotten a few showers and mini-squalls that last less than 5 minutes....so far.

Someone tweeted this with the caption "Westheimer Road"

Stella Link at Braeswood here. Intersections are full but our street has drained.

Bayous are still rising. If we get the potential 7 inches they say in the next day I expect this to be worse than Memorial Day.

Just drove into Houston on I-10. From Columbus (Colorado River) to Brookshire, lots of water, lakes and torrents really. Saw barns, homes, trucks in the water. However, I-10 was dry and sun poking out most of the way.

Not too bad here in the Museum District. But only three of the 48 of us made it into work today and we are at a hospital.

Fine here in SE Fort Bend County - most of the bad stuff was well west of us.

I do think the definitions of a 100 and 500 year flood event need to be re-addressed. This is our second major (TS Allison like) storm in less than a year. I also wonder if parts of Houston will ever truly be livable again with these extreme rain events. You pretty much need to be living in an area protected by a levee or else you're subject to major flooding.

I spent the night with a friend in the Antoine/290 area because I had an early appointment today (which, of course, ended up being cancelled). She got an inch of water in her house, 6 inches in the sunken parts. We were up at 4 am, getting stuff up off the floor. I drove home about 3 pm, Tidwell to TC Jester to Little York to Shepherd to 45, didn't encounter water over road anywhere, but would have been a very different story earlier in the day. She got flooded a whole lot worse in the Memorial Day flood last year, took basically a year to get things restored or nearly so, now this. Really sad.

Houston needs to build a lot more detention. Just no way to handle heavy rains with such flat land and so many places covered with development. One thought I've had is that you'd make the channels through which the various bayous would flow at flood stage a lot wider. For example, TC Jester along White Oak Bayou around about 43rd to Tidwell, there are a bunch of parks with ball diamonds and the like, at about street grade. What if those areas were dug out, with the ball diamonds just a few feet above normal water level, and the park and ball diamond areas available to hold a lot of water, if you can visualize that. One really wild (and ferociously expensive) idea that struck me is why wasn't Houston built like Amsterdam, with lots of canals. If you had about 4 major north-south canals, connecting all of the bayous, things would drain a lot faster. I'm thinking one about east loop, one east of downtown, one about west loop and one west of there, each one running from Greens Bayou in the north to Clear Creek in the south. Of course, right of way costs alone would make that prohibitive now. But there was a time when it could have been done.

(04-18-2016 07:54 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I spent the night with a friend in the Antoine/290 area because I had an early appointment today (which, of course, ended up being cancelled). She got an inch of water in her house, 6 inches in the sunken parts. We were up at 4 am, getting stuff up off the floor. I drove home about 3 pm, Tidwell to TC Jester to Little York to Shepherd to 45, didn't encounter water over road anywhere, but would have been a very different story earlier in the day. She got flooded a whole lot worse in the Memorial Day flood last year, took basically a year to get things restored or nearly so, now this. Really sad.

Houston needs to build a lot more detention. Just no way to handle heavy rains with such flat land and so many places covered with development. One thought I've had is that you'd make the channels through which the various bayous would flow at flood stage a lot wider. For example, TC Jester along White Oak Bayou around about 43rd to Tidwell, there are a bunch of parks with ball diamonds and the like, at about street grade. What if those areas were dug out, with the ball diamonds just a few feet above normal water level, and the park and ball diamond areas available to hold a lot of water, if you can visualize that. One really wild (and ferociously expensive) idea that struck me is why wasn't Houston built like Amsterdam, with lots of canals. If you had about 4 major north-south canals, connecting all of the bayous, things would drain a lot faster. I'm thinking one about east loop, one east of downtown, one about west loop and one west of there, each one running from Greens Bayou in the north to Clear Creek in the south. Of course, right of way costs alone would make that prohibitive now. But there was a time when it could have been done.

The right of way may be there, if you can find a way to make the hydrology work along the electric transmission line right of ways. Many of which run north/south.

UH Professor

Glad the guy got out safe, but c'mon.

Regarding Houston's preparedness for big storms like this and the inevitable mega-hurricane:

A Long Read

A Podcast

If it rains a lot tonight, I'm in trouble. Retention pond across the street is at capacity. Not much I can do about it

(04-18-2016 08:59 PM)jellowl Wrote:  UH Professor

Glad the guy got out safe, but c'mon.

Why not paint a depth gauge on those pillars? maybe people would not think it was shallow if they could see the depth gauge reading 3-4 feet of depth.

(04-18-2016 08:47 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  The right of way may be there, if you can find a way to make the hydrology work along the electric transmission line right of ways. Many of which run north/south.

Electric lines, water lines, sewer lines, gas pipelines, off the top of my head would all be problems. Hydrology should be doable because the elevation differences aren't that great, but I'm not a CivE so I may very well not be anticipating all the problems there. It just pops into my mind every time I visit Amsterdam.

(04-19-2016 03:24 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(04-18-2016 08:47 PM)loki_the_bubba Wrote:  The right of way may be there, if you can find a way to make the hydrology work along the electric transmission line right of ways. Many of which run north/south.

Electric lines, water lines, sewer lines, gas pipelines, off the top of my head would all be problems. Hydrology should be doable because the elevation differences aren't that great, but I'm not a CivE so I may very well not be anticipating all the problems there. It just pops into my mind every time I visit Amsterdam.

There are a lot of structural and institutional issues that are faced from a societal perspective to getting anything meaningful done. Just look at the fact that no tangible results have come from Ike with regards to storm surge mitigation along the coast, or the people that continue to remodel homes in places like Meyerland without consideration to flood defense. Combine the general malaise and disdain for public infrastructure projects by people in the City of Houston, with a rather unconservative design criteria (US is still using just flood plains as design basis while the Dutch have using risk modeling for a while now), and a general lack of understanding of flood risk and mitigation, and you have the starting point as to why very little has been done to reduce the flood risks of the COH.

Luckily some efforts have been made alone Brays Bayou to increase storage so that the Med Center is protected (it hasn't flooded in the last three big rainfall events), but obviously that solution has done little to protect those downstream of Bray's. Bayou Greenways is a project that should help reduce some flooding risk through a mix of dechanilization and increased storage, but I'm not convinced that it will be enough by the time all parts are complete. But hey, at least it counters my argument above that big infrastructure projects don't happen in Houston.

(04-19-2016 02:09 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(04-18-2016 08:59 PM)jellowl Wrote:  UH Professor

Glad the guy got out safe, but c'mon.

Why not paint a depth gauge on those pillars? maybe people would not think it was shallow if they could see the depth gauge reading 3-4 feet of depth.

I agree there should probably be a sign that says something about water level, but that wouldn't of helped that guy. Talk about clueless. If you drive that way to work every morning you know it goes down another 10 feet. I mean there was a news crew right there filming a car that had water up to its roof but he "thought it wasn't that deep"?

It's pretty unfortunate that fatalities are in the exact same spots every time. Beltway 8 at hardy. 610 and 59, etc. People just don't listen to the warnings. One fatality report from yesterday was that a driver went around the toll road employees truck who was parked to block the road then drove straight into the water which was estimated at 20' deep. Toll employee tried to save them but at 6am in cold water he couldn't get to them.