%**+€^*% Rain

Had a proper Hill Country thunderstorm last night, got about 4", now it just started raining again.

I think it's glorious.

 

Just drove through Lake Little York @ Brittmoore to get to work. Worst I've ever driven through.

 

Send the rain to Austin. We need it. Austin has some type of weather bubble where storms avoid it but will hit its surrounding counties.

 

I'm in NW Houston and will be boned by this rain if it continues all week like I've heard it will. My house won't be flooded but once highway 6 and/or parallel roads start to flood, my commute will go from 20 minutes to 90 minutes. During the last bad flood it was taking me 2 hours to drive the 12 miles to work.

 

They extended the flood watch through tomorrow morning with the chance of more heavy rain this afternoon and tonight.

 

That's actually supposed to happen and I wonder if there has ever been discussion to dredge out Addicks and Barker, making them "deeper" than their current levels so they could hold more water. Maybe even permanent deep lakes if possible. They fill way to easily and dams are way too small so they are constantly releasing water downstream. I know that area is very flat so it might not be possible or feasible.

That being said, I'm waiting for insurance companies and/or people to just abandon flood prone areas. I wish the city/county/state/fed would work with these folks (nearby relocation assistance) and turn the area into park (flood protection) areas. More park/green space is always great and the communities would be nicer and safer for people and properties.

 

I thought this was a copycat thread of the NIST Password thread

 

They are already planning on bringing Barker out towards Highway 6 to give it more detention area but they still need more. There's a huge detention project on 59 and Little York as well and I believe they're working on expanding Braes in certain areas.

The boom in 2012 with the rapid construction of 99 and all of these shopping malls is causing huge run off that these areas just can't discharge. There have already been articles written that if Addicks or Barker were to fail the damage would dwarf what we saw in New Orleans with Katrina.

 

Houston has hardcore embraced ring roads, 610, BW-8, GP-99, so that makes the I-10, I-69, I-45 choking noose around downtown irrelevant. There is no reason to drive "through" downtown with so many options to go "around" downtown. For those going "around" they should re-route all of those roads onto existing rings and for those going "to" the roads should spread like tentacles (local example Spur 527) onto the existing centralized street grids. Then use that newly created freeway space for flood control parks to beatify and more importantly protect arguably Houston's most expensive real estate. That would created hundreds of acres to "protect" central Houston and a very large, beautiful, park ring as a bonus.

You could re-route I-69 onto a widened/stacked 610-E and 610-S. Same with I-45. I-10 could be re-routed onto a widened/stacked 610-N. We already sort of do this with 290, Hardy Toll Road, 90, 225, etc... and cities like D.C. & Baltimore do this on a much larger rings (I-495 is 64 miles, I-695 51 miles, 610 only 38 miles) with only '1' ring road let alone 3!

Ideally if HCTRA would ever fulfill their promise of making BW-8 "free" (remove all tolls) you could re-route everything onto BW-8 which could probably handle the traffic right now.

Houston used to have these forward thinking, futurology minded folks but today's leaders are stale or even regressive. We need these folks to show up!

 

I wouldn't hold your breath. Houston development has become a cesspool of used car lots, empty office buildings, generic apartments, town homes, mattress stores and storage warehouses.

Almost every major architectural landmark was built decades ago. The city favors bland corporate interests over interesting public projects. See Astrodome.

 

If only anyone had mentioned this years & years ago, when they announced their plans to pave over the Katy Prairie...oh wait, they did.

 

The city just needs to keep justifying it's freeway and tollway fetish. I'm sure flood impact studies were done, but we design buildings to resist 100 year flood events and consider 500 year flood events though they aren't standard practice.

We seemingly have a 100 year flood every 6 months now. It's not good and we keep on slathering the city in more concrete (290). Cypress Creek already flooded intensely a year and a half ago and that was before 290 was finished.

 

The city is pure cement now so water has no where to go when these large storms hit. I remember the last flood there were people who had their homes flooded and they said they had lived in the same place for 10-20 yrs and had never had a problem until the past 2 years.