My boss just walked in and said "there's nothing to worry about!!" "It's not even going to hit us" lol. Looks like I'm stuck at the office all day. Was hoping to jet out to the Bryan/College Station area this afternoon.
By levee system do you mean our freeways? Because that's the only system we have. Update on me: The wife won out, we drove to Beaumont. Hit quite a bit of rain driving here, but no traffic. The edge of the bands stop right before you get here, but rain is forecasted to start around noon Edit: never mind its starting now. Clear Lake was already much more active this morning than I expected it be. Some pounding rain and pretty good gusts.
I'm talking about the entire Houston area because there are places under Houston's jurisdiction that are way above that. Most of the outer areas of the city's ETJ range from 110-150ft above sea level (mainly W/NW/N sides). Some of the further out cities to the north are in the 300ft range They could have expanded the bayous earlier on in the area's development and created larger buffers around them, or could have built more reservoirs. The soil you described are only predominate in the coastal prairies. The more western and northern sides of town have different soil types (and some that should help with flooding) yet they flood pretty terribly. Look at how cheaply they built the Grand Parkway segments in the far west sides. Built all this new concrete but didn't have the tollway elevated on an embankment for it's length through the floodplain and did not build consistent drainage on either side of it. Historic amount of rainfall in a short-span is the biggest reason for it, but even in "regular" thunderstorms, it gets worse than it should.
I work next to Kroger's- lol. This is a black weekend for them, they are going to cover the whole month's profit for this past couple days. I've never seen them pack like this, ever. I went past at a different Kroger's at 7am, the parking lot was like a Black Friday for them. houstontranstar.org
It's true there's not a levee system, but we do have a dam system. If the Addicks and Barker dams failed for example....there'd be a LOT of people in severe danger.
What are the implications of this for Houston? It's very complicated, and dependent on a track that is far from locked in. We can say for sure that, along this track, rain will be a huge issue. It also raises some concerns about winds and storm surge. There is also the potential, for a time, that Harvey will be pushing waters into the bay when waters are trying to rush out.
My boss told me to make the decision to send people home or keep them. Everyone has come to me this morning acting like they are worried. Looks like we are shutting down at 12!
