Tag Archive for: Water Flood Hazards

What’s Going On in Your Neighborhood?

Ever drive down a road, see someone clearing land, and wonder what was going in? Every wonder what the boundaries of your Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ) were? Do you know where the boundaries of your City, Council district, and the City’s Extra Territorial Jurisdiction (ETJ) are?

Plat Tracker is Gateway to Understanding Developments Around You

Here’s a quick and easy way to find the answers to all those questions and more. It’s the Houston Plat Tracker website.

The colored parcels represent land being developed.

Clicking on any one of the colored parcels in the map pulls up information about it.

Clicking on the parcel shows plat application number, name and when it is being reviewed.
Turn layers on and off to see the boundaries of City Council Districts, the City limits, the ETJ, TIRZ districts, management districts, historical districts and more.

Plat Tracker also contains powerful measuring and drawing tools.

Zooming into that big purple area north of Huffman in the maps above and then outlining it, showed that the two developments, called Timbers and Los Pinos, comprise more than 6,000 acres!

Plat Tracker has a gallery of 29 different base maps. They include road maps, satellite images, and more. The possibilities are almost endless.

Plat Tracker satellite view. Notice how those two new developments will take advantage of the Grand Parkway as it goes in. Also notice how Colony Ridge in the upper right is getting as big as Kingwood.

Plat Tracker is one of the best ways I know of to see and understand the region’s relentless expansion. Check out all the features on the Plat Tracker website.

You can use what you find on Plat Tracker to get even more information on the City’s Planning Commission website as projects come up for review.

Other GIS Websites Offered By City of Houston

Also check this gateway to other GIS (geographic information systems) that the City offers. The City offers 26 GIS maps that show everything from pothole repair requests to flood hazards, parks, transportation, recreational facilities, land use, controlled airspace, and more.

Flood hazards in the upper Lake Houston Area.

Posted by Bob Rehak on 6/20/2021

1391 Days since Hurricane Harvey

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.

Water/Flood Hazards within the City of Houston

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.

You can see the outlines of Harris County in the extent of the waterways. The bright areas near the coast represent hurricane evacuation zones and zip codes.

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