After the floods of early May 2024 and as we got yet another flood warning (East Fork at FM1485), people are asking once again, “What can we do to reduce our flood risk?” Ironically, with a few exceptions, the answers are the same as those identified after Harvey. We just need to implement them.
Few of the action items identified years ago have been implemented. Meanwhile, many underlying conditions that contribute to flood risk, i.e., insufficiently mitigated upstream development and sand mining, are accelerating. Sometimes it feels that as fast as we fix things up, others muck them up.
Could have Been Much, Much Worse
The Lake Houston Area narrowly escaped a disaster during the early May floods. A small number of homes flooded. However, a far larger number were almost seriously damaged. Had storms dumped a little more water in the wrong places, that flood could have easily destroyed thousands of homes. Water was lapping at their foundations.
Ironically, the amount of water that caused the flooding this May was about a third of what we received during Harvey.
That should underscore how vulnerable people in the Lake Houston Area remain to flooding. So, let’s look back at what happened to recommendations that came out of Hurricane Harvey studies.
Recommendations from 2020 San Jacinto River Watershed Master Drainage Plan
After Harvey, Harris County Flood Control, Montgomery County, the San Jacinto River Authority and the City of Houston joined forces to identify ways to reduce flood risk in the San Jacinto River Basin.
In December 2020, they published a 3,600 page study called the San Jacinto Regional Watershed Master Drainage Plan.
Pages 36-38 of the executive summary contain recommendations. Page 38 identifies and quantifies the value of 16 recommended flood-mitigation projects.
Short-Term Strategies (Page 36)
Vision Group – to promote collaboration and momentum
Policy – standardizing minimum requirements for future development
Floodplain Preservation – to prevent increases in future flood risk
Flood Monitoring and Warning Enhancements – adding gages along major streams
Flood Response – enhancing communication, identifying and prioritizing flood prone areas, and developing public education strategies
Buyouts – to remove homes and businesses that flood frequently from the floodplain
Floodplain Re-Mapping – to inform people of changes to their risk. Water surface elevations in a 100-year flood have increased between .5 and 4.5 feet with the adoption of Atlas 14.
Watershed Protection Studies – for each sub watershed to identify where we need local drainage improvements.
Long-Term Strategies (Page 37)
Adoption of “No adverse impact” Policy – to ensure upstream mitigation efforts don’t increase downstream flooding
Right of Way Acquisition – purchasing land for future flood mitigation projects
Utilities and Roadways – protecting evacuation routes and critical infrastructure during planning
Project Phasing to Overcome Funding Constraints – due to the high cost of mitigation projects.
16 Specific Channel and Stormwater-Detention Projects (Page 38)
See project rankings in table below along with projected costs.
Top 16 Projects Identified in SJR Master Watershed Plan
Subsequent portions of the report describe each recommendation in each category in more detail. You can find all sections on the HCFCD website. They total hundreds of megabytes.
Not Much Has Happened in Last Four Years
Sadly, while elected officials have been busy chasing funding, not much has been accomplished on the ground in any of these three categories that would actually reduce flood risk. Said another way, we’ve seen little construction. We’ve seen most progress in the first category.
Short-Term Solutions:
Vision Group: The San Jacinto Regional Flood Planning Group was recommended to pull together recommendations for the State’s first flood plan. A draft was released last week.
Policy: Montgomery County is revising its drainage criteria manual. But county commissioners have not yet adopted it. Neither MoCo, nor Liberty County have adopted the minimum drainage standards for areas draining into Harris County.
Floodplain Preservation is spotty. Non-profits, such as the Bayou Land Conservancy have stepped up. And some governmental agencies have discouraged floodplain development. But loopholes exist in regulations and enforcement is lacking in many places even if regulations exist.
Flood Monitoring and Warning Enhancements – SJRA installed several gages upstream from Lake Conroe, but more are still needed. In the last flood, they still couldn’t tell exactly how much water was coming in so that they could match releases to stabilize the lake level.
Flood Response: Harris County Flood Control stepped up its warnings and provided updated river forecasts two to three times a day. The SJRA did too. The Mayor had multiple press conferences in the Kingwood area before and during the flood. He worked with first responders to make sure people were kept out of harms way. That was a far cry from Harvey where a quarter of all the deaths in the county happened in Kingwood. And elderly people found themselves trapped by rising floodwaters in the middle of the night.
Buyouts – HCFCD bought out the townhomes along Marina Drive in Forest Cove that flooded repeatedly. And Montgomery County has also bought up many properties that flooded repetitively. But many more remain.
Floodplain Re-Mapping – FEMA has yet to approve Harris County’s updated flood maps. They’re still approximately three years from completion.
Watershed Protection Studies – Some have been done. Other’s haven’t even started. It’s been spotty. Little has been done with the studies already completed. And no grants will be approved without studiers.
Long-Term Solutions:
“No adverse impact” is violated more than the Ten Commandments.
Right of Way Acquisition – has moved forward on several properties in the Cypress Creek watershed and Harris County bought the 270-acre Woodridge Village Property in Montgomery County from Perry Homes.
Roadways – Lake Houston Redevelopment Authority/TIRZ 10 is expanding Northpark Drive and building an all-weather evacuation route out of Kingwood. It includes a bridge over the UP Railroad Tracks. FM2100 and FM1960 are expanding in Harris County. But the Huffman-Cleveland Road is still cut off in Liberty County. The Grand Parkway has been completed. But FM1485 right next to it has been cut off by floodwaters twice already this year.
Project Phasing – is a standard practice in the industry. But projects associated with the flood bond are moving so slowly that inflation has cost us about 20% of the bond’s purchasing power. Where will the money come from to complete all the projects?
Specific Projects
Not one of these projects listed in the table above has started construction. None is even close. No land has been acquired for any. And yet, unlike studies, these things actually protect property when floodwaters rise.
Engineers looked into Project #2 (Walnut Creek Detention), but by the time they investigated, someone had already purchased the land and announced plans to build a solar farm on it.
Where to Go From Here
Net: We’ve picked some of the low-hanging fruit. But we have a long way to go. Especially with construction projects that actually protect property.
As I interviewed people for this post, it became clear that different entities with different interests has hampered many mitigation efforts. We walk between competing, balkanized fiefdoms.
No one anywhere speaks for all the people of this watershed.
Just as bad, the business processes surrounding flood mitigation sometimes become bewilderingly complex. Many smaller counties, cities and MUDs don’t have the expertise to even apply for grants.
Even worse, some groups undermine improvements. For instance, we’ve dredged the mouth of the Kingwood Diversion Ditch at River Grove Park twice since Hurricane Harvey. And now it needs it again – as the West Fork flows through a sand pit. Even before floodwaters have receded, you can already see sediment poking up through the water. For decades the dredging interval was about once every eight years.
The people of a river basin are inextricably bound together by water. Yet our personal interests (What’s in it for me?) and political boundaries still divide us.
We need to recognize that fact and develop better ways to design solutions. More on that in a future post. I’ll also discuss some things that the San Jacinto River Basin Plan did not address.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/14/24
2450 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/20240514-LH-FloodMitProjects.jpg?fit=1100%2C793&ssl=17931100adminadmin2024-05-14 21:58:582024-05-15 14:43:03Most Projects To Address Lake Houston Flooding Still Not Started
Last week, the West Fork San Jacinto rerouted itself through a mile-long sand pit at the five-square mile Hallett Mine in Porter. Some people reported problems understanding how all the images in that post related to each other and where the mine was. To help eliminate confusion, I returned to the site this morning show continuous video from one breach to the other. I’ve also included a wider map below.
Location of Mine and Path of Video
The map below shows the relationship of the pit “captured” by the river to the rest of the mine, Porter and Kingwood.
Arrow indicates location and direction of drone video.
Video and Still Shots of Captured Pit
Clouds were low and I was flying near the base of them. So, the video looks a bit hazy.
One-minute video shot morning of 5/3/24 while flying from south to north.First breach is exit from pit, second is entrance.Water flows toward the camera through the pit to the left of the channel.
Note several things as you watch the video.
Size of the entry and exit breaches. They’re impossible to measure precisely, but likely greater than 100 feet wide.
Depth of the pond that used to be filled with wastewater before the dikes broke. See exposed sides where vegetation did not grow.
Sand being washed downstream before the water receded.
Dune blocking the West Fork in the upper right near the end of the video.
Here are some still shots with more contrast that show those highlights and other aspects. I’ll arrange these in the reverse order, i.e., flying downriver in the opposite direction starting from the entrance breach..
Giant dune has totally blocked off West Fork and diverted it into pit (upper left).Local residents say dune is 5-8 ft. high. People on either side of it cannot see each other.
Water now takes the path of least resistance, flowing through the giant pond.
Note freshly deposited sand in pit. The island (right center) is reportedly a burial ground for Native Americans.Note color difference in water and how pond water now flows downstream. Also note height of pond walls.
Have a cool, refreshing glass of Hallett.
This flows straight into Lake Houston.
Downstream Photos Taken on 5/13/23 at US59 Bridge
Looking S across West Fork toward Humble. Note ripples in fresh layers of sand under US59 Bridge.
The City of Houston is launching a new $34 million dredging program to remove another 800,000 cubic yards of sediment accumulating in the West Fork downstream from the bridge.
Hallett contends that sand cannot escape its pits and that this sand comes from river bank erosion on other tributaries such as Spring and Cypress Creeks.
Robin Sedewitz, Kingwood resident contributed the three photos and video below.
Note height of debris in bridge supports.
Trees swept downstream in the May flood are forming a dam on the south side of the old bridge.Trees caught under the southbound lanes of US59.
30-second video by Robin Sedewitz panning from upstream to down showing accumulations of debris in bridge supports.
During Harvey, debris such as this got caught in supports for the old railroad bridge and dammed the river, backing water up into Humble and Kingwood businesses. The railroad ultimately built a new bridge that would let trees pass through. No trees got hung up on the new bridge supports during this flood.
Where to Report Problems
Harris County Flood Control now surveys the river after floods and removes debris. They just haven’t gotten to this debris yet.
If you see problems that need HCFCD’s attention, you can report them here.
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/20240513-DJI_20240513075211_0600_D.jpg?fit=1100%2C619&ssl=16191100adminadmin2024-05-13 16:31:332024-05-15 12:31:08Video of Mile-Long Sand Pit Leaking Into West Fork
Does a wetter-than-normal spring say anything about Houston’s chances for a busier-than-normal hurricane season? According to Jeff Linder, Harris County’s meteorologist, the two correlate poorly. In the process of exploring that, I discovered some surprising facts about the intensity and seasonality of rainfall in the region.
So Far, Not So Much Wetter than Normal
“Harris County is running slightly above normal for 2024,” says Lindner. “But much of this can be traced back to the rains in late January.”
“I would likely attribute the winter and early Spring rains more to the El Niño pattern in the eastern and central Pacific,” he added. “They tend to bring above-normal rainfall to the southern plains in the fall, winter, and spring months.”
“As for the upcoming hurricane season, there is little correlation between slightly above average rainfall and any sort of potential activity on the Texas coast. With that said, conditions look highly favorable for an active hurricane season in 2024 including very warm sea surface temperatures throughout the Atlantic basin, the collapse of El Nino and development of La Niña.”
Lindner concluded, “That tends to create increasingly favorable conditions for tropical development, especially in the Caribbean Sea, and a wetter than normal pattern from the coast of Africa into the Caribbean.”
The graphs below explain Lindner’s characterization of the temperature and rainfall as “slightly” above normal as we head into hurricane season.
I pulled them from the climate page for Houston on Weather.gov. The National Weather Service (NWS) shows 35 different reporting stations in the Houston region and gives you nine ways to visualize daily, monthly and yearly data.
As I browsed the site, I discovered two interesting things. When you look at monthly averages:
Rainfall totals differ greatly depending on your part of Houston.
Seasonality of rainfall also differs depending on your area.
Let’s look at the two variables using data and graphs from the climate page above.
Rainfall YTD vs. Highs, Lows, Averages
Bush Intercontinental Airport received about 21 inches of rain (YTD through May 12). In late January and February, Bush was having the rainiest year on record. But since then, despite very heavy rains to the north, we’ve only beaten the average YTD figures by a slight amount, as Lindner observed.
Meanwhile, Galveston started out with record rainfall. Only in the last two or three weeks did it fall behind the record year (1949). Galveston is still about 50% above its average total YTD.
In Conroe, rainfall totals have flirted all year with the record high year of 1935. They only dipped below average for a week or so in January.
Rainiest Months Vary with Distance from Coast
At Bush Intercontinental Airport, June (#1) and October (#2) are the rainiest months with May ranking #3.
But at Galveston’s Scholes Field, May is the ninth rainiest month and September the wettest. September is the peak of hurricane season.
In Conroe, May is the wettest month.
Spring rains play a larger role in the yearly total the farther north you go. But in Galveston, the totals jump up during hurricane season.
Not too much of a surprise there. Many fronts lose their punch before reaching the coast in the winter and spring months. Likewise, many tropical disturbances lose their punch 90 miles inland during the summer and fall – hurricane season.
What Data Illustrates
This data illustrates that it’s hard to generalize about the weather. You can’t take one storm (or even a series of storms) in one location and posit it as proof of a larger trend. Too many factors govern the weather to do that.
Moreover, my rain gage is reading 142% of the YTD figures from the nearest official gage at IAH just seven miles away.
That’s not uncommon. Sometimes a rain bomb lands on your home. Thunderstorms train over you for hours. Or a front stalls when it reaches your address. Those things can skew your perception of the weather.
That said, all the experts are still warning of a much higher-than-normal hurricane season this year. But for reasons unrelated to local flooding.
Happy Mother’s Day
Let me close this Mother’s Day with some beauty from Mother Nature. The son of a friend captured this image while flying around the storm that slammed north Houston on May 9th. He was at 30,000 feet and the clouds topped out at 70,000 feet as the sun was setting.
Photo courtesy of reader.Used with permission.
The power of the photo above should remind you. If you somehow missed it, we just finished Hurricane Preparedness Week. Have you made your preparations for hurricane season yet?
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/12/24
2448 Days since Hurricane Harvey
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/May-9-2024-30000ft-altitude-70000ft-tall-storm-Chris-flying.jpg?fit=1512%2C2016&ssl=120161512adminadmin2024-05-12 13:41:242024-05-12 13:43:09Does Wet Spring Portend Intense Hurricane Season?
Most Projects To Address Lake Houston Flooding Still Not Started
After the floods of early May 2024 and as we got yet another flood warning (East Fork at FM1485), people are asking once again, “What can we do to reduce our flood risk?” Ironically, with a few exceptions, the answers are the same as those identified after Harvey. We just need to implement them.
Few of the action items identified years ago have been implemented. Meanwhile, many underlying conditions that contribute to flood risk, i.e., insufficiently mitigated upstream development and sand mining, are accelerating. Sometimes it feels that as fast as we fix things up, others muck them up.
Could have Been Much, Much Worse
The Lake Houston Area narrowly escaped a disaster during the early May floods. A small number of homes flooded. However, a far larger number were almost seriously damaged. Had storms dumped a little more water in the wrong places, that flood could have easily destroyed thousands of homes. Water was lapping at their foundations.
That should underscore how vulnerable people in the Lake Houston Area remain to flooding. So, let’s look back at what happened to recommendations that came out of Hurricane Harvey studies.
Recommendations from 2020 San Jacinto River Watershed Master Drainage Plan
After Harvey, Harris County Flood Control, Montgomery County, the San Jacinto River Authority and the City of Houston joined forces to identify ways to reduce flood risk in the San Jacinto River Basin.
In December 2020, they published a 3,600 page study called the San Jacinto Regional Watershed Master Drainage Plan.
Pages 36-38 of the executive summary contain recommendations. Page 38 identifies and quantifies the value of 16 recommended flood-mitigation projects.
Short-Term Strategies (Page 36)
Long-Term Strategies (Page 37)
16 Specific Channel and Stormwater-Detention Projects (Page 38)
See project rankings in table below along with projected costs.
Subsequent portions of the report describe each recommendation in each category in more detail. You can find all sections on the HCFCD website. They total hundreds of megabytes.
Not Much Has Happened in Last Four Years
Sadly, while elected officials have been busy chasing funding, not much has been accomplished on the ground in any of these three categories that would actually reduce flood risk. Said another way, we’ve seen little construction. We’ve seen most progress in the first category.
Short-Term Solutions:
Vision Group: The San Jacinto Regional Flood Planning Group was recommended to pull together recommendations for the State’s first flood plan. A draft was released last week.
Policy: Montgomery County is revising its drainage criteria manual. But county commissioners have not yet adopted it. Neither MoCo, nor Liberty County have adopted the minimum drainage standards for areas draining into Harris County.
Floodplain Preservation is spotty. Non-profits, such as the Bayou Land Conservancy have stepped up. And some governmental agencies have discouraged floodplain development. But loopholes exist in regulations and enforcement is lacking in many places even if regulations exist.
Flood Monitoring and Warning Enhancements – SJRA installed several gages upstream from Lake Conroe, but more are still needed. In the last flood, they still couldn’t tell exactly how much water was coming in so that they could match releases to stabilize the lake level.
Flood Response: Harris County Flood Control stepped up its warnings and provided updated river forecasts two to three times a day. The SJRA did too. The Mayor had multiple press conferences in the Kingwood area before and during the flood. He worked with first responders to make sure people were kept out of harms way. That was a far cry from Harvey where a quarter of all the deaths in the county happened in Kingwood. And elderly people found themselves trapped by rising floodwaters in the middle of the night.
Buyouts – HCFCD bought out the townhomes along Marina Drive in Forest Cove that flooded repeatedly. And Montgomery County has also bought up many properties that flooded repetitively. But many more remain.
Floodplain Re-Mapping – FEMA has yet to approve Harris County’s updated flood maps. They’re still approximately three years from completion.
Watershed Protection Studies – Some have been done. Other’s haven’t even started. It’s been spotty. Little has been done with the studies already completed. And no grants will be approved without studiers.
Long-Term Solutions:
“No adverse impact” is violated more than the Ten Commandments.
Right of Way Acquisition – has moved forward on several properties in the Cypress Creek watershed and Harris County bought the 270-acre Woodridge Village Property in Montgomery County from Perry Homes.
Roadways – Lake Houston Redevelopment Authority/TIRZ 10 is expanding Northpark Drive and building an all-weather evacuation route out of Kingwood. It includes a bridge over the UP Railroad Tracks. FM2100 and FM1960 are expanding in Harris County. But the Huffman-Cleveland Road is still cut off in Liberty County. The Grand Parkway has been completed. But FM1485 right next to it has been cut off by floodwaters twice already this year.
Project Phasing – is a standard practice in the industry. But projects associated with the flood bond are moving so slowly that inflation has cost us about 20% of the bond’s purchasing power. Where will the money come from to complete all the projects?
Specific Projects
Not one of these projects listed in the table above has started construction. None is even close. No land has been acquired for any. And yet, unlike studies, these things actually protect property when floodwaters rise.
Engineers looked into Project #2 (Walnut Creek Detention), but by the time they investigated, someone had already purchased the land and announced plans to build a solar farm on it.
Where to Go From Here
Net: We’ve picked some of the low-hanging fruit. But we have a long way to go. Especially with construction projects that actually protect property.
As I interviewed people for this post, it became clear that different entities with different interests has hampered many mitigation efforts. We walk between competing, balkanized fiefdoms.
Just as bad, the business processes surrounding flood mitigation sometimes become bewilderingly complex. Many smaller counties, cities and MUDs don’t have the expertise to even apply for grants.
Even worse, some groups undermine improvements. For instance, we’ve dredged the mouth of the Kingwood Diversion Ditch at River Grove Park twice since Hurricane Harvey. And now it needs it again – as the West Fork flows through a sand pit. Even before floodwaters have receded, you can already see sediment poking up through the water. For decades the dredging interval was about once every eight years.
The people of a river basin are inextricably bound together by water. Yet our personal interests (What’s in it for me?) and political boundaries still divide us.
We need to recognize that fact and develop better ways to design solutions. More on that in a future post. I’ll also discuss some things that the San Jacinto River Basin Plan did not address.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/14/24
2450 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Video of Mile-Long Sand Pit Leaking Into West Fork
Correction: This sand pit in this post was sold by Hallett to Riverwalk Porter LLC on January 23, 2024.
Last week, the West Fork San Jacinto rerouted itself through a mile-long sand pit at the five-square mile Hallett Mine in Porter. Some people reported problems understanding how all the images in that post related to each other and where the mine was. To help eliminate confusion, I returned to the site this morning show continuous video from one breach to the other. I’ve also included a wider map below.
Location of Mine and Path of Video
The map below shows the relationship of the pit “captured” by the river to the rest of the mine, Porter and Kingwood.
Video and Still Shots of Captured Pit
Clouds were low and I was flying near the base of them. So, the video looks a bit hazy.
Note several things as you watch the video.
Here are some still shots with more contrast that show those highlights and other aspects. I’ll arrange these in the reverse order, i.e., flying downriver in the opposite direction starting from the entrance breach..
Water now takes the path of least resistance, flowing through the giant pond.
This flows straight into Lake Houston.
Downstream Photos Taken on 5/13/23 at US59 Bridge
The City of Houston is launching a new $34 million dredging program to remove another 800,000 cubic yards of sediment accumulating in the West Fork downstream from the bridge.
Hallett contends that sand cannot escape its pits and that this sand comes from river bank erosion on other tributaries such as Spring and Cypress Creeks.
Robin Sedewitz, Kingwood resident contributed the three photos and video below.
Note height of debris in bridge supports.
During Harvey, debris such as this got caught in supports for the old railroad bridge and dammed the river, backing water up into Humble and Kingwood businesses. The railroad ultimately built a new bridge that would let trees pass through. No trees got hung up on the new bridge supports during this flood.
Where to Report Problems
Harris County Flood Control now surveys the river after floods and removes debris. They just haven’t gotten to this debris yet.
If you see problems that need HCFCD’s attention, you can report them here.
The TCEQ regulates sand mines in the State of Texas. To report sand mine issues, visit: https://www.tceq.texas.gov/compliance/complaints/.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5.13.24
2449 Days since Hurricane Harvey
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
Does Wet Spring Portend Intense Hurricane Season?
Does a wetter-than-normal spring say anything about Houston’s chances for a busier-than-normal hurricane season? According to Jeff Linder, Harris County’s meteorologist, the two correlate poorly. In the process of exploring that, I discovered some surprising facts about the intensity and seasonality of rainfall in the region.
So Far, Not So Much Wetter than Normal
“Harris County is running slightly above normal for 2024,” says Lindner. “But much of this can be traced back to the rains in late January.”
“I would likely attribute the winter and early Spring rains more to the El Niño pattern in the eastern and central Pacific,” he added. “They tend to bring above-normal rainfall to the southern plains in the fall, winter, and spring months.”
“As for the upcoming hurricane season, there is little correlation between slightly above average rainfall and any sort of potential activity on the Texas coast. With that said, conditions look highly favorable for an active hurricane season in 2024 including very warm sea surface temperatures throughout the Atlantic basin, the collapse of El Nino and development of La Niña.”
Lindner concluded, “That tends to create increasingly favorable conditions for tropical development, especially in the Caribbean Sea, and a wetter than normal pattern from the coast of Africa into the Caribbean.”
The graphs below explain Lindner’s characterization of the temperature and rainfall as “slightly” above normal as we head into hurricane season.
I pulled them from the climate page for Houston on Weather.gov. The National Weather Service (NWS) shows 35 different reporting stations in the Houston region and gives you nine ways to visualize daily, monthly and yearly data.
As I browsed the site, I discovered two interesting things. When you look at monthly averages:
Let’s look at the two variables using data and graphs from the climate page above.
Rainfall YTD vs. Highs, Lows, Averages
Bush Intercontinental Airport received about 21 inches of rain (YTD through May 12). In late January and February, Bush was having the rainiest year on record. But since then, despite very heavy rains to the north, we’ve only beaten the average YTD figures by a slight amount, as Lindner observed.
Meanwhile, Galveston started out with record rainfall. Only in the last two or three weeks did it fall behind the record year (1949). Galveston is still about 50% above its average total YTD.
In Conroe, rainfall totals have flirted all year with the record high year of 1935. They only dipped below average for a week or so in January.
Rainiest Months Vary with Distance from Coast
At Bush Intercontinental Airport, June (#1) and October (#2) are the rainiest months with May ranking #3.
But at Galveston’s Scholes Field, May is the ninth rainiest month and September the wettest. September is the peak of hurricane season.
In Conroe, May is the wettest month.
Spring rains play a larger role in the yearly total the farther north you go. But in Galveston, the totals jump up during hurricane season.
Not too much of a surprise there. Many fronts lose their punch before reaching the coast in the winter and spring months. Likewise, many tropical disturbances lose their punch 90 miles inland during the summer and fall – hurricane season.
What Data Illustrates
This data illustrates that it’s hard to generalize about the weather. You can’t take one storm (or even a series of storms) in one location and posit it as proof of a larger trend. Too many factors govern the weather to do that.
Moreover, my rain gage is reading 142% of the YTD figures from the nearest official gage at IAH just seven miles away.
That’s not uncommon. Sometimes a rain bomb lands on your home. Thunderstorms train over you for hours. Or a front stalls when it reaches your address. Those things can skew your perception of the weather.
That said, all the experts are still warning of a much higher-than-normal hurricane season this year. But for reasons unrelated to local flooding.
Happy Mother’s Day
Let me close this Mother’s Day with some beauty from Mother Nature. The son of a friend captured this image while flying around the storm that slammed north Houston on May 9th. He was at 30,000 feet and the clouds topped out at 70,000 feet as the sun was setting.
The power of the photo above should remind you. If you somehow missed it, we just finished Hurricane Preparedness Week. Have you made your preparations for hurricane season yet?
Posted by Bob Rehak on 5/12/24
2448 Days since Hurricane Harvey