City of Houston Map Shows Extent of Water Flood Hazards for Many Smaller Ditches, Streams

If you fear flooding from a small stream and you live inside the Houston City limits, this is THE resource for you. It’s the City’s Water Flood Hazards Viewer. And it’s incredibly detailed. It even shows the extent of flood hazards around many unnamed temporary streams and man-made ditches.

The image above shows Ben’s Branch where it cuts across the Harris/Montgomery County Line. Many homes and businesses in this area flooded during Harvey and Imelda despite being three miles from the nearest river.

The different shadings and cross-hatchings represent floodways, 100-year and 500-year floodplains. I checked around neighborhoods near me where I was familiar with the extent of flooding. The map seems to be very accurate. I only found one or two properties that I would have reclassified.

Impressive Gallery of Base Maps and Other Features

The City’s Water Flood Hazards site contains an impressive gallery of 25 different base map options. They range from customary street maps and satellite views to topographic maps and more.

You can also measure distance and direction with the built in tools. And unlike many such maps, this one contains built in drawing tools that let you make notations and share them with your friends or associates.

Of course, it includes information on flood zones near major rivers, too. It even includes information on hurricane evacuation zones near the coast.

Incredible Flexibility

Because the system is built on a geographic information system database, you can even add data from other databases. That makes the map reflect additional types of information. But warning: this can get very technical.

Great Tool for Research

If you’re considering buying a property or flood insurance, and you live in the City or Harris County, this is definitely a map you should bookmark. The Water Flood Hazards Map is an incredible research tool. For ease of future reference, I have listed the map on the Links page of this website under Floodplain Maps and Elevation.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 9/6/2020

1104 Days after Hurricane Harvey