Houston is Flooding....

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Dr. Keith said:
The flood water would not be cold that first night. This time of year it is very warm and moist in Houston. (Other times of the year it is just somewhat warm and moist. And then a few days of cold and moist, but I digress.) Now that it has been overcast and raining for a few days I bet it is a bit cooler, but that first night I bet the water was well into the 80s. I wouldn't enjoy sitting in it, for lots of reasons, but temperature would not be one of them. ...
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Keep in mind I posted this: "There was an interview on public radio with the daughter of the owner of the assisted living home. It gave the pic more cred." lest I be accused of false things in the future.

As for the water being warm, unless it's as warm as a nice hot bath, the elderly have a much lower tolerance to cold than a younger person.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Keep in mind I posted this: "There was an interview on public radio with the daughter of the owner of the assisted living home. It gave the pic more cred." lest I be accused of false things in the future.
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I don't really care about whether the picture was authentic or whether you believe it. Sorry, I only glanced at it in passing.

I was just responding to the comment about the temperature of the water. Even if the picture included a crocodile snuggling with a cat I thought people would find it interesting how warm such flood waters can actually be.

As for the water being warm, unless it's as warm as a nice hot bath, the elderly have a much lower tolerance to cold than a younger person.
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Does high eighties to low nineties meet that criteria? Especially when the air above is humid and another five to ten degrees warmer.

Because that is what I would expect that first night. The gulf is a very warm body of water that time of year. As in, going swimming at the beach is not refreshing at all in August. The water is the color of coffee with cream and the sun is brutal. You have to go miles off the coast to get any sort of depth, but the gulf is warm even where it is deep. That is what made this storm so big as it approached the land. Warm water powers these big storms.
 
I get the Gulf and typical Houstopolis bodies of water are warm, especially in August, but I wonder how warm the floodwater typically is - it includes several trillion gallons of water evaporated and dumped as rain. I remember Houston rain as being moderately warm, but...
 
sts60 said:
I get the Gulf and typical Houstopolis bodies of water are warm, especially in August, but I wonder how warm the floodwater typically is - it includes several trillion gallons of water evaporated and dumped as rain. I remember Houston rain as being moderately warm, but...
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I think the early waters are warm, from my memory. I remember being in flood water as a kid and it was surprisingly warm. But as the cloudiness lingers I expect things cool off a bit.
 
Dr. Keith said:
I don't really care about whether the picture was authentic or whether you believe it. Sorry, I only glanced at it in passing.
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No worries, but Checkmite is in a pounce crouch.

Dr. Keith said:
Does high eighties to low nineties meet that criteria? Especially when the air above is humid and another five to ten degrees warmer....
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Coastal Water Temperatures ~78F in Galveston. Air temp is 72F currently, might have been higher yesterday.
 
Travis said:
I find it astounding that they allowed housing developers to build subdivisions in areas that flood control dams to inundate in a flood.
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They don't. There are no houses in the flood control basins.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
No worries, but Checkmite is in a pounce crouch.

Coastal Water Temperatures ~78F in Galveston. Air temp is 72F currently, might have been higher yesterday.
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Yes, I mentioned that it will have cooled off a bit after several day of unrelenting ran and cloud cover. My assumption was the flooding we were talking about was the first night of the storm hitting Houston, not several days after the storm hit.

I guarantee it was higher the first night of flooding. Much. Air temp the week before was likely a high in the high nineties and a low in the mid to low 80's. The water temps tend to hover around the mid to upper 80's this time of year.
 
Dr. Keith said:
Best of luck. Looks like a nice neighborhood.

I think one of the places I used to live in the Houston area is currently being evacuated. When I lived there a hydrologist I worked with assured me that it would never flood. She had over designed the levee system because a colleague had messed up the flow predictions. It was designed to 500 year specs instead of the required 100 year specs.
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Yep, Lakes on Eldridge is not even in the 500 year flood plain, except for certain small parts of it, and is specifically designed to handle any possible flood. This event is just crazy, you have to throw out all the rules.

My 87 year old Dad and stepmom are now waiting for a boat to evacuate them.
 
LTC8K6 said:
I definitely heard or read somewhere that houses were in or near those areas and they would likely be flooded when the water was released from the dams.

Not sure exactly, but the gist was that releasing the water would flood homes.
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Neither of you are wrong. They are not within the basin, but releasing more water into the basins at this point will add to flooding well outside the basin. Has anyone mentioned that Houston is really flat?
 
Marcus said:
Yep, Lakes on Eldridge is not even in the 500 year flood plain, except for certain small parts of it, and is specifically designed to handle any possible flood. This event is just crazy, you have to throw out all the rules.

My 87 year old Dad and stepmom are now waiting for a boat to evacuate them.
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That sucks.
 
LTC8K6 said:
I definitely heard or read somewhere that houses were in or near those areas and they would likely be flooded when the water was released from the dams.

Not sure exactly, but the gist was that releasing the water would flood homes.
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Starting yesterday, they started releasing water from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs into Buffalo Bayou,which stretches 53 miles, flowing all the way through Houston into the Gulf. Along the way, additional places will be flooded, including worse flooding downtown. It has to be done though, if those dams burst it would be catastrophic.
 
Marcus said:
They don't. There are no houses in the flood control basins.
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Not sure if it is in the basin but in aerial shots it sure looks like houses are being flooded by the flood control system.
 
Dr. Keith said:
Neither of you are wrong. They are not within the basin, but releasing more water into the basins at this point will add to flooding well outside the basin. Has anyone mentioned that Houston is really flat?
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The basins receive uncontrolled runoff from farther upstream. For the past 70 years they have done a great job of protecting Houston from this water, this is the first time their capacity has been exceeded.
 
Travis said:
Not sure if it is in the basin but in aerial shots it sure looks like houses are being flooded by the flood control system.
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Though they are releasing water from the basins, creating more flooding downstream as I described, it's not enough to keep up with the input from upstream. This morning the maximum fill level of 108' was exceeded, causing water to spill over the northern spillway, inundating additional neighborhoods.
 
Dr. Keith said:
Neither of you are wrong. They are not within the basin, but releasing more water into the basins at this point will add to flooding well outside the basin. Has anyone mentioned that Houston is really flat?
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That's right. The reason the highways now look like rivers is because they were deliberately designed that way to to deal with overflow in the event of flooding.
 
Question: A lot of the Houston flooding is outside recognized flood-prone areas, and many residents would not have bought -- or seen any reason to even consider -- flood insurance. Will ordinary homeowners'/renters insurance cover any of their losses?
 
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