(LATEST NEWS: Major Flooding Hits Southeast Texas)
On Saturday, water rescues from vehicles were reported on the southwest side of Houston in Bellaire, Meyerland, and Westbury. Locally 4-5 inches of rain fell in the area during a short period of time. On Sunday, roads were flooded near Marathon, Texas and near Kingsville, Texas.
(MORE: Is Houston America's Flood Capital?)
How Wet has it Been?
Houston has received over 74 inches of rain in the past 12 months, placing it as the wettest 12-month period ending on May 12 of any year.
This shatters the previous record for this period of 68.25 inches by about 6 inches. Houston currently sits at 24.8 inches of precipitation above average for this 12-month period, with Abilene, Dallas, and Austin also 20 to 25 inches above average over the past 12 months.
Some rivers in east Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas are still above flood stage, and soil moisture remains much higher than average in these areas, meaning even relatively brief heavy rainfall may quickly run off and trigger flash flooding.
With clay soil and tabletop-flat terrain, Houston has endured flooding for generations. Its 1,700 miles of man-made channels struggle to dispatch storm runoff to the Gulf of Mexico.
Now the nation's fourth-largest city is being overwhelmed with more frequent and more destructive floods. The latest calamity occurred April 18, killing eight people and causing tens of millions of dollars in damage. The worsening floods aren't simple acts of nature or just costly local concerns. Federal taxpayers get soaked too.
Extreme downpours have doubled in frequency over the past three decades, climatologists say, in part because of global warming. The other main culprit is unrestrained development in the only major U.S. city without zoning rules. That combination means more pavement and deeper floodwaters. Critics blame cozy relations between developers and local leaders for inadequate flood-protection measures.
An Associated Press analysis of government data found that if Harris County, which includes Houston, were a state it would rank in the top five or six in every category of repeat federal flood losses — defined as any property with two or more losses in a 10-year period amounting to at least $1,000 each.
Since 1998, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has paid more than $3 billion in today's dollars for flood losses in metropolitan Houston.
While repeat federal flood relief payouts average about $3,000 per square mile nationally, they are nearly half a million dollars per square mile in metro Houston. Six of Texas' eight federally declared disasters since December 2013 included floods.
"Houston has always had a flood problem, and the growth in the paving has only made it worse," FEMA Director Craig Fugate said. When the best building and land-use practices aren't followed, "we see the costs of disasters go up."
Metro Houston, which includes smaller communities and unincorporated parts of Harris County, has added more than a million people since 1992, while the amount of water-absorbing wetlands per capita has been halved. Paved surfaces in the county increased by well over 25 percent in that period, according to researchers.
Paved land generates five times more runoff than woodlands.
"There's basically very little control of development," said Susan Cutter, director of the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina.
Since the 1980s, Houston's preferred approach to flood control, besides improving drainage, has been to build thousands of detention ponds, concrete-lined pools that capture stormwater and pipe it out slowly.
But developers don't build enough floodwater retention into their projects, and "areas that never flooded before now flood in the smallest event," said Ed Browne, chairmen of the citizens' group Residents Against Flooding .
For example, if a property previously had construction and is being redeveloped, building codes don't require detention ponds...
dohboi wrote:Thanks for all the data and insights. I would point out again, though, that we tend to see the latest record or extreme event as 'as bad as it can get' and if we've survived it, presumably everything will go swimmingly (so to speak) in the future.
But of course the extremes are going to get ever more extreme.
I have been wondering, though, along the lines that ROCK mentioned above--how fast will the oil and gas extraction and refining business implode, and will that be the 'wave' that really 'inundates' Houston. Certainly, so far, more American cities have been destroys by economic shifts (aka outsourcing and tech changes) than by GW-related disasters. The latter will fast be catching up with the former, imvho, though.
With clay soil and tabletop-flat terrain, Houston has endured flooding for generations. Its 1,700 miles of man-made channels struggle to dispatch storm runoff to the Gulf of Mexico.
Now the nation's fourth-largest city is being overwhelmed with more frequent and more destructive floods. The latest calamity occurred April 18, killing eight people and causing tens of millions of dollars in damage. The worsening floods aren't simple acts of nature or just costly local concerns. Federal taxpayers get soaked too.
An Associated Press analysis of government data found that if Harris County, which includes Houston, were a state it would rank in the top five or six in every category of repeat federal flood losses — defined as any property with two or more losses in a 10-year period amounting to at least $1,000 each.
Since 1998, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has paid more than $3 billion in today's dollars for flood losses in metropolitan Houston.
While repeat federal flood relief payouts average about $3,000 per square mile nationally, they are nearly half a million dollars per square mile in metro Houston. Six of Texas' eight federally declared disasters since December 2013 included floods.
Since the 1980s, Houston's preferred approach to flood control, besides improving drainage, has been to build thousands of detention ponds, concrete-lined pools that capture stormwater and pipe it out slowly.
But developers don't build enough floodwater retention into their projects, and "areas that never flooded before now flood in the smallest event," said Ed Browne, chairmen of the citizens' group Residents Against Flooding .
For example, if a property previously had construction and is being redeveloped, building codes don't require detention ponds...
So, yeah, Houston may 'stay afloat' by continuing to leach of the Federal Gov (all the time complaining about the same government) to the tune of $3 billion, and doubtless much, much more going forward.
But those federal funds will have more and more claimants to them as more and more areas get threatened and devastated by ever-rising seas and ever-more-intense-and-damaging storms.
dohboi wrote:"STOP WRITING REPAIR CHECKS"
Great idea. But Houston and the corporations it hosts have a lot of influence in congress, so they will continue to be able to coerce congress to keep ladling out the free money. To say otherwise is just enormously, and one might say criminally, naive about how power works.
I would agree about many little adjustments, but to the extent we are using historic and current data to make those plans, we will always be well behind the ball.
dohboi wrote:OK, you're right, moneyed interests never influence politics in DC.
They call them rain bombs.
A new breed of severe storm fueled by a record hot atmosphere. One capable of dumping 2-4 inches of rainfall an hour and generating voracious flash floods that can devour homes and cars in just minutes. And in southeast Texas, the rain bombs have been going off like gangbusters.
In this week’s most recent iteration of flaring, climate change induced, storms, a region north of Houston and South of Dallas saw flood after flood after flood. Now, hundreds of people have been forced to abandon inundated homes, thousands of cars have been submerged, and seven people are dead.
Rainfall totals for the region over the past seven days have averaged between 7 and 10 inches. But local amounts in the most intense bombification zones have come in at 16, 19, and even as high as 30 inches in Washington County--all-time record rainfall totals that might be associated with a powerful hurricane.
Floods that would typically happen only once every 500 years.
But in the new moisture-laden atmosphere of a record warm world, a garden variety thunderstorm now has enough atmospheric oomph to frequently set off what were once multi-century floods.
...the Brazos River is today expected to crest at 53.5 feet — its highest level ever recorded.
And this crest is predicted to push a flood of 8-9 feet into neighboring communities. --extreme flooding that local officials say Texans are not at all prepared for. In total, more than 40,000 people have been urged to evacuate.
But with the worst flooding still on the way, the situation is still very fluid.
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