Harris County Residents: Learn To Use One Easy Site That Monitors Bayous Rising

   www.harriscountyfws.org

That's the Harris County Flood Warning System. Please view the page before continuing to read this post. If you enter from the main page, its usage is more or less obvious (except for one quirk), and considering, in every significant rainstorm, how many people here run their cars into deep water, it could be good for drivers (though not so good for car dealers) if everyone visited the site... frequently.

The quirk? The flood gauge boxes are named by nearest major street intersection. Once you've hovered over a flood gauge box to obtain a popup for the particular flood gauge you're interested in, you must mouse to its "more information" link WITHOUT crossing another flood gauge box! You'll doubtless do just that a few times until you learn to watch where you're driving mousing.

Click2Houston similar map

Yes, Click2Houston (broadcast TV Channel 2) has a similar map which provides some people similar info on bayou flooding (see thumbnail at right). It's great, IF you happen to wish to travel near one of its listed flood gauges, carry a 40" flatscreen TV in your car and are able to read very small print on a TV screen in a mere instant... it's not that the Harris County site is better, but that for unassisted home use to obtain info on a specific gauge it's probably more convenient.

NOTE: the web site calls the device a "gage"; please google that spelling ("define:gage") to see why I do not use it. I am confident a reader will correct me if there's an industry-specific reason for using the aberrant spelling. - SB

Is The End Of The Rain In Sight? Maybe —

At about 10:30 PM CDT, we just heard an announcement on KHOU-TV that part of the band of heavy rain coming northeast from the coast and passing through Houston (causing some flooding), specifically the trailing edge,  is now visible on radar, possibly 2½‑3‑3½ hours away from Houston. That means there should be an end... sooner than initially expected... to the flooding. So far, the street in front of Our House is not flooded across, and is passable in any but the shallowest vehicle, though I'd prefer not to drive it right now. This may pass us with less damage than we feared. I'll let you know when I know something more myself.

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UPDATE sometime after midnight: even the hours mentioned above may not be soon enough at the rate some areas in the central part of the county are flooding. I'm still hoping for good luck at Our House, and what I see out the window bears out my hope. More as it happens.

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UN-UPDATE: OK. Great. TV stations KHOU and KPRC have recently given quite different versions of what is expected in the next few hours. Maybe this "weather forecasting" thingy is not quite what it's cracked up to be. In any case, I'm going to quit letting their conflicting reports make a fool of me, at least on this one issue... apologies for the confusion, which is obviously not mine alone.

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UPDATE: about 11:15 AM Sunday. The rain has stopped at our location, except for occasional very light, sparse showers. Some other parts of the city got some flooding; I'll leave that to the media to report. Our lawn never got even grass-deep in water, the back patio never had standing water on it, and I don't believe any neighborhood critters (outdoor, whether wild or pet) would have had any trouble surviving. There could always be more weather today, or, Dog forbid, another storm... That's it for me regarding Patricia. What a boring but tense 48 hours!

At Our House, We Got Through The Day Without Water Flooding In

Others in Texas and elsewhere were not so lucky. And even here, it was a near thing: in my first-ever experience with a genuine flash flood, the water level on the patio went from zero to the height of the wooden deck, onward to the top of the metal seal on the bottom of the den window... in under 15 minutes. Many residential neighborhoods in Houston and elsewhere in Texas have been threatened with significant home flooding, not once in a week, but several times a day, or, in the more saturated areas, continuously for days. As I said... Stella and I and the kitties were among the lucky ones; we merely watched the mess on TV.

NOT Our House, thank goodness...
not this time!

A word to the @#$%^& right-wing nutjobs: do you still insist that global climate change is a conspiracy faked by liberals?