Ok, all good with myself, family, property and pets. There are thousands and thousands of people in really bad shape across the SE Texas area affected by the storm. Including BBmom whose house was badly damaged by the hurricane as it first came ashore. So my family was really lucky and just inconvenienced. I will recap briefly my expeerience.
We are still unable to drive away from our house with floodwaters around (and basically with nowhere to flow). We are under "Mandatory Evacuation" orders, but chose to stay. We have not lost power, water, sewer, cable or internet at anytime. So the four of us are just "at the house" until the waters recede. We have been at the house since Thursday last week. I can walk out of my little section of the subdivision to a road about 500 yds away and have someone pick me up, take me to the store etc. I did this yesterday with a large backpack, went to the grocery store, packed in some more food.
I live in a subdivision that is near the Brazos river. Sienna Plantation has around 5,000 roof tops. It's a mega subdivision. Like a couple million people in the greater Houston area, the subdivisions were created by first building a levee to protect against a river, creek or bayou from coming out of it's floodway. This removes the FEMA requirement for flood insurance to back mortgages. I happen to be near "the drain side" of the subdivision, not far from the levee. With the tremendous amount of rain in a very large area (around 36 inches in my subdivision over four days), rain water flooded inside of the levee and it drains toward my side. Hence street flooding and the "house arrest". The levee has gates that can be opened to let the rain water out. It also has 14 pumps on the inside that pump the drain water up and over the levee. The pumps capacity has been overwhelmed by the amount of rain.
With the large amount of rain in a very large area, the nearby Brazos river is flooding. We have a 59' levee and a river first projected to crest at 59'. The projection has been revised downward to 56'. Previous record was 54.47'. About 30 minutes ago the crest was 54.98'. The crest is projected to be tomorrow at 10:00 am.
With the river against the levee on one side, and the rainwater on the other, the pumps can't get the water out of the subdivision very quickly. And that's the water outside my window.
The brown water is the flooding Brazos river. The clearer water is the rainwater. A little bit out of the picture are the pumps. Far in the distance is a sports complex, baseball, football, soccer fields. It's flooded as designed. You can see houses in the upper right.
Oh, that little white thing on the jetty in the middle? They told us to not worry about that, it's just the normal sloughing that can occur. And also there must be a normal process of calling 100 volunteers to fill sandbags at midnight. All this paragraph is sarcasm.
If you want to see an aerial video of the subdivision click http://www.fox26houston.com/ scroll to video and click "Aerial View of Sienna Plantation". My apologies for the :30 ad to start. At the :44 sec mark, you start to get the same view as the pic above.
Last Thursday night, a tornado touched down in Sienna Plantation. Damage, but no one hurt. It's path was about 500 yds from my house. I heard it. Tough sound to forget.
I don't think the cresting river will cause any more flooding in my area. The rainwater will get pumped out. I'll be able to drive out in another day or so.
Lots of people are looking after us. Friends, family of course check on us. National guard would drive high clearance trucks around during hurricane and honk to see if we wanted out. City Fire department boats. Border Patrol airboats came through for several days. That was a treat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr4_HiE_j6Q
Thanks everybody for thinking about my family and I.
Hope everything turns out well for you.
