"TheRealBicycleBuck" (therealbicyclebuck)
09/19/2019 at 19:25 • Filed to: None
4
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"TheRealBicycleBuck" (therealbicyclebuck)
09/19/2019 at 19:25 • Filed to: None | 4
| 21 |
An essay in pictures.
The storm approaches. It’s much darker than it seems in the picture. This was about 9:00 and all the street lights came on.
A little while later, the sky fell.
It took about 20 minutes for the channel to fill. The white froth is air being pushed out of the storm sewer. The inlets in the parking lot were also spewing water and air. One of the branches of the tree on the left was pushed down by the weight of the water far enough to touch the power lines. It caught fire. Good thing there was enough rain to put it out!
Shortly after this, the street flooded enough to start collecting cars. Before it was done, there were at least five drowned cars between the intersection and our parking lot.
Speaking of parking lots, this is what it looks like when inlets become fountains. There’s a bit of an optical illusion here. That big parking lot is the upper deck of a two-story garage.
What does the lower deck look like? I’m glad you asked!
It’s a pond! What you’re seeing there is the bed of an extended cab, F-150 STX. What you can’t see is the Honda right next to it and the Tundra a few spaces to the left. As the water rose, the Tundra decided to say goodbye by putting on a little light show.
I stopped by to pay my respects before I left for the day.
It was surprising how fast the water came up. A stream gage not far from the office recorded the event for posterity.
We’re expecting more rain tonight, so I’m not certain I’ll be able to go home tomorrow. Parts of I-10 between Houston and Baton Rouge were shut down today from flooding. I guess we’ll see in the morning!
Honeybunchesofgoats
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 19:31 |
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I legitimately love Houston in a way that is surprising given that I hate every other place in Texas with a fiery passion, but goddamn am I happy to not plan my life around whether it’s going to rain.
gmporschenut also a fan of hondas
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 19:33 |
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complet el y nuts
facw
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 19:35 |
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So if it were me, I would have parked on the roof of the garage, and not on the ground floor knowing that flooding was possible...
My company’s Houston office was open today (normally they tell people to stay home), and one of my coworkers apparently got stuck trying to get home in the middle of the day (due to zero visibility rather than flooding).
M.T. Blake
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 19:42 |
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Invest in life rafts if you plan on living out there for an extended period of time.
Seriously though, the little time I’ve spent in Texas, it flooded. It’s got to be annoying and depressing.
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TheRealBicycleBuck
> Honeybunchesofgoats
09/19/2019 at 19:44 |
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This is the first time in the last two years that weather has been an issue. I guess I’ve always lived in storm-prone areas, so I have no idea what it’s like not to have occasional interruptions.
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TheRealBicycleBuck
> facw
09/19/2019 at 19:45 |
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I surface park when I’m downtown, but at this office, I prefer the top of the ramp from the second to third deck. I can back into a spot there so leaving is a straight shot down the ramp.
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TheRealBicycleBuck
> M.T. Blake
09/19/2019 at 19:48 |
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It’s not so bad as long as it isn’t your house. We were flooded by tropical storm Allison when we lived here full-time. We were renting the house, so we didn’t have to deal with the cleanup - we just moved. Since then, I’ve been diligent about staying away from deep water. The hotel I’m staying at is pretty close to a bayou, but I made sure to check on the road conditions before leaving for the day.
Rainbow
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 19:55 |
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As much as I hate Georgia for various reasons, the northern half really is the perfect place in terms of weather. Too many hills for regular flooding (it does happen, but only near rivers) and too far inland for hurricanes. Tornados are relatively uncommon, and snow is just not a thing. The humidity sucks, but it doesn't damage anything or hurt anyone.
lone_liberal
> Rainbow
09/19/2019 at 20:00 |
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I much prefer our snow to the southeastern humidity. I lived in central Florida for the better part of a year and I never want to experience that ever again.
mazda616
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 20:15 |
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That’s crazy! Insurance companies are going to be inundated with claims again.
Nick Has an Exocet
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 20:20 |
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Every place has it s thing. In California, we have earthquakes. Most of them are kind of like a thunderstorm. Every once in a while, one is like getting 3 hurricanes in the course of 60 seconds. Some places have tornadoes. Other places have hurricanes, ice storms, and blizzards.
If you live in New England (where I grew up), you get hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, ice storms, microbursts, nor easters, extreme heat and humidity, and 24+ inches of snow from a single storm. There was a storm called “the Great Snow Hurricane of 1888" that dropped 60 inches of snow, a drought in 1947 produced 200 wildfires in Maine in just 20 days, the “2011 New England tornado outbreak”, and of course everyone remembers “the Perfect Storm”.
I think New Englanders are a special breed. They constantly get their butts kicked multiple times per year. One of the worst I’ve experienced was an ice storm. It happened overnight and most people didn’t get a wink of sleep because they could hear the trees falling down several times per minute and were simply waiting for one to fall on their roof. Of course, this was in the dark since the power lines had long since been taken out by the ice. In some places it tooks months to restore power. My house took 5 days and was spared. The ice was widespread but my valley was spared. House 3 doors up in either direction werent so lucky. The tornado outbreak was around the same time. One of them basically dissipated in the backyard after ripping 60+ miles of the state and some of our neighborhood roofs off. The river next to the house routinely floods from snowmelt combined with noreasters and hurricanes. LOL.
wkiernan
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 20:25 |
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Toyota T
undra for sale! Like new,
clean
.
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facw
> Rainbow
09/19/2019 at 20:27 |
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But snow is good! You guys have to go all the way to Alabama if you want to go skiing...
Wrong Wheel Drive (41%)
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 20:51 |
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It sprinkled the other day on my way to work. That was the first rain I had seen since April! The smell of rain in the air was so visceral and the rainbow shortly before getting my hair wet since I had the top down in my Miata. I actually forgot what rain smelled like. Flooding like that seems extreme lol.
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TheRealBicycleBuck
> Nick Has an Exocet
09/19/2019 at 21:56 |
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My range of experience is similar to yours when it comes to disasters. Funnily enough, the tornado which damaged our house and one of the ice storms happened to us in Louisiana. I lived in tornado alley when I was younger, but was never directly affected. Go figure.
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TheRealBicycleBuck
> mazda616
09/19/2019 at 21:58 |
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I went for a drive to find some dinner. There are stalled cars all over the place and an army of tow trucks clearing them out. I found a couple of cars blocking roads around my hotel. Getting back to the hotel was my biggest concern this afternoon.
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TheRealBicycleBuck
> wkiernan
09/19/2019 at 21:58 |
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Ran when parked....
DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 22:48 |
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Glad to see you weren’t stranded I saw some pretty nasty looking pictures of downtown basically underwater. Bad day in Houston is an understatement.
DipodomysDeserti
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/19/2019 at 23:22 |
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Was the severity of the storm a surprise? Seems like there’s a lot of empty spots on the top level. Didn’t Houston just flood, like, last year?
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DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back
> DipodomysDeserti
09/20/2019 at 00:01 |
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Yeah it was a bit of a surprise, it seemed like Imelda had moved north but it seems like she stalled a bit and a severe rain band sank through the city. 12-20” got dropped on the north half, between 5-10” if you lived south of I10. That’s the problem with these tropical systems though, they can be a bit unpredictable when it comes to bullseye rain totals. Some places get really unlucky.
And yeah Houston floods pretty much every year to some extent, although Harvey was 2 years ago which may be what you’re thinking of . I don’t know if you’ve ever been out this way but developers have done pretty much everything in their power to pave over everything green. There’s just nowhere for this water to go.
Jordan and the Slowrunner, Boomer Intensifies
> TheRealBicycleBuck
09/20/2019 at 08:51 |
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