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2019 Rain Thread

Biff Tannen

By Biff Tannen
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GreenspointTexas

GreenspointTexas 9556

Posted
Posted
14 minutes ago, Chet Steadman said:

Does the City of Houston have any major infrastructure plans in the works to combat the constant wide-spread flooding or is Art single-handily going to save the city himself?

Houston, like New Orleans, should have never been built/founded where it was

 

short of spending billions of dollars to totally re-do existing bayou waterways, buy up flood prone homes, and decrease/destroy concrete “prairies” that exist, there is nothing houston can do 

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phdhorn
phdhorn

Figured I'd post this here, it's where you'd look for me. First, thanks very much for the concern (I had no idea), it's appreciated.  I mean, really?  Wow, that's been surprising. Second, I'm fi

DonnyKerabatsos
DonnyKerabatsos

is the excessive rain this year being triggered from the ash rising to the atmosphere from the concentration camps on our border?  Like volcanoes creating storms when the erupt? 

Patricio Swayze
Patricio Swayze

So after my company started sending people home, a coworker of mine who takes the metro in from cypress left to catch the bus. He got to the NW transit center at 610 and old Katy road and they decided

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

Posted
Posted

Post-Mortem Update:

Wow, tough break on the Houston area... that was all due to a cold front (which most of Austin pretty clearly feels today) hitting air that hadn't been that rained out much, and just exploded.  Plus it was close enough to the Gulf to bring in more warm, moist air more quickly after the earlier events this week... that air didn't make it into Austin since the front pushed it out.

So the good news is that this front has pushed away most of the warm air that can lead to severe weather, and for that reason has clipped off possible rain totals between now and Sunday.  But it doesn't mean it's not going to rain again, and it could rain hard here/there... but probably not to the degree if the recent atmosphere stayed in place.
Another disturbance is going to roll by Friday into Saturday, probably nothing severe, but anything that falls, even an inch, could cause problems.  Bulk of the rain will be Friday evening into Saturday midday.  More on how much/where.

Sunday looks great, then another round of little systems comes through.  Right now rain chances aren't too high (maybe 40%) but they almost always go up once the systems get close and it's clearer what's going on.  Back later if rain merits, or early next week if the new systems look ominous.

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Js1

Js1 85056

Posted
Posted
9 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Holee fuck Fort Bend ISD, Needville ISD, Lamar ISD, and Katy ISD Houston ISD, and Stanford ISD are all closed.  That’s a shitload of schools closed.  Didn’t realize so many roads were flooded.  

Cleveland, Aldine, Alief, Alvin, Channelview, Conroe, Clear Creek, Crosby, Cy-Fair, Dayton, Fort Bend, Friendswood, Galena Park, HISD, Humble, Katy, Klein, Magnolia, New Caney, Pearland, Pasadena, Spring, Spring Branch, Stafford, Tomball.....

Basically all of them.  Period. 

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Hate

Hate 20102

Posted
Posted

I’m stunned that they closed Conroe ISD today. My wife is pissed because she has a lot of work that she will be missing today but my son is thrilled. We got 4 inches of rain last night and all of the roads are fine. I haven’t seen anything to indicate that areas north of here got hit much harder than us. I have no idea why the canceled classes here.

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drt

drt 637

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, GreenspointTexas said:

Houston, like New Orleans, should have never been built/founded where it was

 

short of spending billions of dollars to totally re-do existing bayou waterways, buy up flood prone homes, and decrease/destroy concrete “prairies” that exist, there is nothing houston can do 

I always wondered if mandating the permeable pavers that are so common elsewhere in the world for parking lots in Houston would do any good, considering where the water table is located. 

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clapclapclap

clapclapclap 9000

Posted
Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, Js1 said:

https://www.chron.com/news/politics/houston/article/Harris-County-Flood-Control-District-proposes-12777607.php

The full project envisions a network of tunnels across the county to carry water from several of Houston’s waterways, including White Oak Bayou, Hunting Bayou, Greens Bayou, Halls Bayou, Buffalo Bayou, Clear Creek and Cypress Creek. The goal under the plan would be for those waterways to be able to keep a 100-year storm event within their banks.

This makes me so ragey.  Always do the bare minimum, then shift to just a bit above that and congratulation themselves on going the extra mile. 

Never mind that time after time those theoretical calculations of the 100-year flood plain have proven to be woefully underestimated.  Just keep pretending that it's all we need to design for.  

 

A 100-year storm refers to rainfall that has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year, and typically ranges from 12 to 14 inches in 24 hours. Houston has suffered a 500-year flood each of the last three years. A 500-year storm has a .2 percent chance of happening in any year.

Besides, weren't developers already required to build above the (bogus) 100-year flood plain and include enough mitigations that their projects (in theory) won't increase the flooding risk for downstream neighborhoods?

https://www.texastribune.org/2018/04/04/houston-city-council-approves-changes-floodplain-regulations-narrow-vo/  

Currently, homeowners in the 100-year floodplain are required to have flood insurance and build new homes 1 foot above the floodplain.

Whoa, a whole whopping 1 feet above.  Such a brave margin of error.  Say, how high do the wakes get when that a-hole pickup driver plows down the flooded street?

Turner’s proposal will increase that to 2 feet and expand it to homes in the 500-year floodplain.

Ok, that's somewhat better.  And yet only passed Houston city council 9-7.

 

And...

A 2017 report from property information company CoreLogic found that more than half of Houston’s moderate- to high-risk homes for flooding are located outside of FEMA-designated flood zones and aren’t required to have flood insurance.

 

Back to the massive flood tunnels proposal:

“There’s no way that the county could move forward with this project on this scale, without significant help from the federal government and the state of Texas,” Emmett spokesman Joe Stinebaker said. “This is not a project at this point that the judge sees the county taking on alone.”

And that's a huge part of the problem.  The governments in the Houston region continue to insist on irresponsibly overdeveloping while refusing to make those developers (and themselves) come anywhere close to fully funding true mitigation.  The rest of the state already subsidizes the Houston area through higher insurance rates for all of us, since Houston politicians keep making sure they get pooled in with everyone else.  Gotta keep developing as much land as possible because:

1.  School districts and every other taxing entity want to max those tax revenue.

2.  Development does provide tons of jobs, and keeping housing cost as low as possible does help lure new residents and employers.

3.  Developers also provide tons of campaign donations, perks, and every kind of virtual bribes.

4.  All that growth is critical to the big chunk of Houston movers, shakers, and boosters that have an Aggie-like inferiority complex that fuels a strong desire to try to keep up (and dream of one day surpassing) DFW's growth.  "We're the 4th largest city! blah blah blah."

5.  Too many city staffers and council members have demanded we massively increase the density inside the loop (without sufficient open space offsets) because that's one of the core dogma in planning textbooks, all the cool cities are doing it,  globull warming!, talking points, etc.

6.  Too easy to simply say the local govt's hands are tied and they must approve development that meet requirements that can only be changed by the state legislature There's some truth to that, but there are measures they can take that they often ignore, and usually don't make a sufficient effort to lobby the legislature to make the needed changes (to be fair, much of that would not be easy, but step up and make a highly visible effort.)

7.  Easier to ask for forgiveness and fed/state bailouts ("Not our fault, 500-year flood!") than be more responsible from the start. 

8.  Inertia, brain dead straight ballot voting, and plenty of other excuses.

Some of the poor decisions are blatantly obvious.  Just look at all the new subdivisions in Sugar Land and Richmond that are bowls, often completely surrounded by levees, that have crowded the wide Brazos River floodplain into a relatively narrow channel.  Or all those subdivisions along Galveston Bay and miles inland that are still vulnerable to a Cat 4 storm surge.  No Ike Dike built yet, still trying to get everyone else to pay for it.  Or all the subdivisions in southern Montgomery County jammed into the lowland between Spring Creek and the San Jac River.  Recent builds after several bad floods.  But all those taxpayers, jobs, and growth rate bragging rights!  The rest of the country will bail us out when we go crying for disaster relief funds!  Except there will be a lot of families who did some due diligence, bought in what allegedly wasn't in a 100-year floodplain, yet who won't be made whole.

I'm fed up.  I'll gladly vote against my political party for an election or two if the other side nominates strong advocates for responsibly reforming our development regs and approach at the state and local levels (if they are proven governing/executive types with track records, not some opportunistic extremist airheads saying the usual simple soundbites.)   

Completely ridiculous how much development has been allowed in floodplains statewide.  Houston is just magnified because of the flat topography.

 

Edited by clapclapclap
I'm mad, bro
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gsoda3

gsoda3 3234

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, clapclapclap said:

The rest of the state already subsidizes the Houston area through higher insurance rates for all of us, since Houston politicians keep making sure they get pooled in with everyone else. 

is that true?  when did this happen?

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Nueces River Rat

Nueces River Rat 5528

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:

is that true?  when did this happen?

I was about to say something about this.

 

Flood insurance in most if not all flood prone areas is a Federal Government product and not a state one like TWIA.   So the risk in this pools is spread out among the policy holders in all 50 states. 

And really I don't want to hear about how the rest of the state subsidizes the Gulf coast when it come to other forms of insurance because the aforementioned TWIA took care of some of that and many if not all of the traditional homeowners policies  down here excluded windstorm for years until just recently when some of the carriers started writing it again.    While I know Houston and the upper Gulf Coast  (pre Harvey) has been hit a few times with storms vs other parts of the coast,  I would venture to say the DFW area had years upon years of major storm damage from the run of the mill severe weather events and tornados where many of us here on the coast had our policy paper work gathering dust in our file cabinet because we haven't had to use it.    I mean before Harvey, the last big storm to do any horrible damage of major significance on this part of the coast was maybe Allen in 1980 and before that Celia in 1970.   You can't turn on the TV weather or go on line during the spring and summer in non drought years without seeing stories of major hail or wind damage  in the DFW area.  Hell it might be in the DFW area's  best interest to allow the risk for weather related damage to be spread out to we little people on the Gulf coast.   Just a thought.   

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Turkleton

Turkleton 145

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Hate said:

I’m stunned that they closed Conroe ISD today. My wife is pissed because she has a lot of work that she will be missing today but my son is thrilled. We got 4 inches of rain last night and all of the roads are fine. I haven’t seen anything to indicate that areas north of here got hit much harder than us. I have no idea why the canceled classes here.

Seems odd. I live in far north Conroe. I think we only got around 2"

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Macanudo

Macanudo 12922

Posted
Posted

Everybody cancelled school today because at 4:00 am we didn't know what PHD wrote up above about the storm changing.    Last night, we thought there was a decent chance that there would be a shit ton more rain coming down around 3:00 this afternoon right at dismissal.   Seeing grade schoolers spend the night sleeping in their classrooms doesn't go over well.   And it already happened this week in Cleveland.

The storm last night was weird in that it rained a ton, there was amazing lightning but the thunder wasn't all that loud.   My back yard was lighting up like a giant flashbulb was going off constantly but it was that loud.  

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Blotto

Blotto 23418

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Nueces River Rat said:

I was about to say something about this.

 

Flood insurance in most if not all flood prone areas is a Federal Government product and not a state one like TWIA.   So the risk in this pools is spread out among the policy holders in all 50 states. 

And really I don't want to hear about how the rest of the state subsidizes the Gulf coast when it come to other forms of insurance because the aforementioned TWIA took care of some of that and many if not all of the traditional homeowners policies  down here excluded windstorm for years until just recently when some of the carriers started writing it again.    While I know Houston and the upper Gulf Coast  (pre Harvey) has been hit a few times with storms vs other parts of the coast,  I would venture to say the DFW area had years upon years of major storm damage from the run of the mill severe weather events and tornados where many of us here on the coast had our policy paper work gathering dust in our file cabinet because we haven't had to use it.    I mean before Harvey, the last big storm to do any horrible damage of major significance on this part of the coast was maybe Allen in 1980 and before that Celia in 1970.   You can't turn on the TV weather or go on line during the spring and summer in non drought years without seeing stories of major hail or wind damage  in the DFW area.  Hell it might be in the DFW area's  best interest to allow the risk for weather related damage to be spread out to we little people on the Gulf coast.   Just a thought.   

How could you forget Hurricane Ike (2008)......and all those bodies....in all of those trees.

Estimated economic impact on Texas alone was $30 billion. That's gonna eclipse a hell of a lot of tornado, rain, and wind damage in the DFW area. Throw in Harvey and all of the other flooding Houston has experienced, and I believe your math may be a little off.

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Js1

Js1 85056

Posted
Posted
24 minutes ago, Blotto said:

How could you forget Hurricane Ike (2008)......and all those bodies....in all of those trees.

Estimated economic impact on Texas alone was $30 billion. That's gonna eclipse a hell of a lot of tornado, rain, and wind damage in the DFW area. Throw in Harvey and all of the other flooding Houston has experienced, and I believe your math may be a little off.

Like Ike and Allison haven't happened in the past 20 years. 

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Nueces River Rat

Nueces River Rat 5528

Posted
Posted
19 minutes ago, Blotto said:

How could you forget Hurricane Ike (2008)......and all those bodies....in all of those trees.

Estimated economic impact on Texas alone was $30 billion. That's gonna eclipse a hell of a lot of tornado, rain, and wind damage in the DFW area. Throw in Harvey and all of the other flooding Houston has experienced, and I believe your math may be a little off.

I was talking about the Coastal Bend down to the Brownsville primarily where Ike was a non factor.

But yea let's talk about Houston while we are at it and you have a gap of twenty five years (Alicia 1983)  where that area of Texas went without a major landfall.  Point being lawmakers in  other parts of the state make it sound like we are fricken Florida and getting whacked by major storms on a yearly basis and we are not.

Most of Houston's final bill from Harvey is going to come from flood and not wind related damage.   While communities like Rockport, Port A and a few others took some major wind damage, the cost to TWIA won't be as bad had Harvey made a direct hit on Corpus or Houston.  

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Modessit

Modessit 5595

Posted
Posted
This article on KHOU's website has a video of one determined-ass lightning strike:
Video: 12-second lightning strike hits same spot over and over in Fort Bend County
https://tinyurl.com/yxgbzphq
 
I always find it interesting that each lightning strike to one spot is exactly the same shape as the previous ones to that spot. Electric arcs should change shape even if starting and ending at the same points.
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jimmyjazz

jimmyjazz 45513

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, Modessit said:

I always find it interesting that each lightning strike to one spot is exactly the same shape as the previous ones to that spot. Electric arcs should change shape even if starting and ending at the same points.

Er, what?

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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

Posted
Posted (edited)

Update:
Some good news... the front was a little stronger and long-lasting (i.e. didn't come back north as a warm front), so the air is pretty stable against severe weather.  Plus, it looks like rain totals are going to be lower now, maybe 1-2 inches max in a strong pocket of rain.  However (youknowthedrill), ground is wet and will take very little to flood.

So a new disturbance, this one the last of the chain, going through tonight/tomorrow.  Could be periods of light/moderate rain, I guess an occasional stormy pocket of heavier rain - but I really don't expect anything like we saw the past 2 weeks.  Chances for stronger rain/storms tomorrow after sunrise into the afternoon, but again, not severe likely.  I expect a "mild" (i.e. lazy "rainy morning" type thing) with this.  If changes, I'll post.

Once this moves out, Sunday will be great! Sunny to boot.  Then Monday-Tuesday another small kerfluffle moves in but at this point is not expected to be much of a rainmaker.  Again, changes, I'll post. 

Then by Wednesday next week, we're finally out of this chain of storms (for now).  3-4 sunny/nice days look to be for later next week.  

However we're still forecast to be wetter than normal for almost all of May, so not done yet.

Trivia:  Official rain totals in ATX Mabry for May is about 7.75ish".  Puts it #10 on the all-time.  With 2/3 of May left, my guess is we'll still clobber the record.

Today was the lowest "daytime high" (max) of about 64° in May in about 35 years, one of the lowest "high's" May history ever (about 10th lowest).  Ahhhhhh....

Houston, I'll check the forecast a little harder later.. the front has pushed through you too, so for now you're dry.  Forecasts however calling for good chance of front pushing back north and stalling.. if that happens, you could be in for another round of heavy rain.  All this would occur from about 1 a.m.→noon Sat.  Then moves out.  So far, radar is quiet, maybe the front will hold southeast of you and keep the rain there.   More later maybe if I'm still up.

Lates.

Edited by phdhorn
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Wally Pryor

Wally Pryor 5240

Posted
Posted (edited)
On 5/10/2019 at 8:37 PM, phdhorn said:

Update:

Then by Wednesday next week, we're finally out of this chain of storms (for now).  3-4 sunny/nice days look to be for later next week.  

 

Wed, Thursday, Friday, Saturday - I sees rain.  More. 

Edited by Wally Pryor
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phdhorn

phdhorn 6224

Posted
Posted

This week's rain... meh... not a lot, not e'rrywhere.  Won't post much about this unless changes.

Saturday... yeah, that's a little more a la the last 2 weeks... could get severe, could dump brief but heavy rains around.  More later this week, not much clear yet about that one.

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