For my non-Houston friends- to help you understand the devastation:

[Xipe Totec]

Stolen from a friend who stole it from someone else:

Houston is huge. The greater metropolitan area is circled by the Grand Parkway - which is 170 miles long. That makes the area of the circle inside the Grand Parkway over 2200 sq. miles.
2200 square miles of densely habited, urban and suburban, areas is flooded.
Imagine if the entire state of Delaware, with twice the population of Manhattan, was under water.

That's Houston.

It's still raining.

[SunSeeker]

1. And it's flat, the water has nowhere to go. nt

[L. Coyote]

24. And it is all pavement and roofs. Impervious surface change (1940-2017)

People do this to themselves with lack of planning and foresight.

[Dustlawyer]

44. And it's not just Houston as you know.

I live 90 miles East of downtown Houston in Beaumont and we have been hammered as well. Worried as Harvey comes closer and the storm surge stops the rivers and bayous from draining. This thing is just unbelievable!

[Honeycombe8]

2. I am shocked at what's happening over there. Horrible. I'm in SW La.

We're having our own issues with the rain with flooding...but nothing like Houston.

Groups are leaving here, BTW, to go to Houston to help out, some to Corpus Christi, and some staying here to help.

FEMA said Houston would be recovering for years. I am speechless.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. AND Harvey is gonna double back onto Houston.

Unimaginable.

[Igel]

4. Wait until the Brazos gets going.

All that water in the watershed needs to pass just SW of Houston.

(And not all of Houston's flooded. Yet. We're outside the city limits but not far from hwy 8, certainly well within the Grand Parkway. Our area's high enough with good enough drainage. Of course, we drain into Greens Bayou somewhere around hwy 8 and the Hardy and so we're helping to flood the people downstream. And points SE of Houston have been harder hit with rain. Just a mess out there.)

[dalton99a]

5. How big is Houston? This is the skyline not of Houston, but of the Texas Medical Center in Houston:

A humongous collection of hospitals/schools/clinics/research facilities

[cloudbase]

22. Houston is so big that

when it's Tuesday in Baytown, it's Thursday in Katy.

[Chellee]

47. LOL!

An unexpected smile on a terrible day. Thank you.

[cannabis_flower]

40. Houston is so big

that there are skylines of the Medical Center, Downtown, the Galleria and probably several other areas.

[pamela]

6. It's heartbreaking.

A few years ago, I spent a month in Kemah, 1 week in Spring, 2 weeks in Baytown and 2 weeks in Galveston. I particularly loved Galveston and Kemah. From what I am reading, Kemah has been hit really hard.

I know what you mean about Houston being huge. We stayed in Baytown when we had some business to take care of in Houston and we were always shocked by how far we had to drive. It looks much smaller on the map. We had to go to Kady one day and, omg, that was an all day trip and it's really just on the other side of Houston. I can't imagine how bad it would have been if they had tried to evacuate.

[herding cats]

7. Thank you for this.

Houston is a truly huge major city. Which doesn't even figure in the connected burbs of the city. The population is extensive and grows more every year.

I lived there for 7 years and weathered many a flood, but nothing like this one. This is one for the record books. No surge tracking up the bayous, it's all from rainfall and still this horrific.

These systems tend to pick up in rainfall at night. My thoughts are with everyone impacted.

[Kablooie]

8. God.

And last I heard the hurricane is scheduled to return to Houston Wednesday morning.

[greyl]

9. The Grand Parkway (99) doesn't circle anything and is about 85 miles long.

A generous area that includes Galveston, Baytown, using 99 as the left edge, and roughly approximating the distance of 99 from the center of Houston 25.5 miles out, the length is about 190 miles.

Houston is 627 square miles. Washington D.C. is 64. N.Y., 469.

Don't mean to detract from the more important overall point here, but I was curious, looked at Google Earth, and it seems worth pointing out.

[ggccvvtt]

10. Austin and poor pets in Houston :(

New here. Just talked to my Dad in Austin tonight. They're okay but are experiencing constant heavy rain. If they have to dump water from the two reservoirs just west of Houston, it will flow east and there could be problems. The idea, of course, is to get water to the Houston ship channel, but it has to go through Houston to get there. What a disaster! The videos of the abandoned pets, or pets that need rescue, are so upsetting.

[calimary]

31. Welcome to DU, ggccvvtt!

MAN that bothers me, too. They're always part of the collateral damage from these disasters. Homeless pets that wind up in shelters, and then worse, because the family has to flee. Awful. I remember when the foreclosure crisis hit parts of SoCal rather badly. The East Valley Animal Shelter was overwhelmed with a sudden population explosion of abandoned pets. SO sad!!! We have four rescues in our house - three cats, one dog. I wish I could take them all, but as the one mainly responsible for animal maintenance, that's about as much as I can handle.

[LittleGirl]

35. Welcome

to DU! Hope you're okay. I really like Austin when I was there in 1978. I'm sure it's changed a bit since then. wink.

[gopiscrap]

50. welcome to DU

[Doreen]

51. Welcome to DU.

[mountain grammy]

11. Lived there from 1978 to 1984

So sorry. Hold on Houston

[ggccvvtt]

12. Made it from

'69 to '88 before escaping to SF!

[mountain grammy]

20. "Escape " is right

Glad to be in Colorado.. welcome to DU.

[C Moon]

13. I toured with a band and we hit Houston.

I loved Houston. The club was a cool old wooden structure. We hit a Mexican place for dinner that was awesome. To me it had a lot of character building wise, and the people were mega-friendly. I don't know what section of Houston I was in, though. It seemed to be an older area.
Sorry to see this happen.

[CCExile]

37. Was it Fitzgerald's?

I ran that club for Ms. Fitz in the early 80's, when it was primarily R&B.

[C Moon]

38. Yes! That sounds familiar and looking at photos, that appears to be the place.

I remember the wood deck out front.
Good guess!

[SharonKatz]

14. Government has failed Houston

It's flooded before. Not this bad but pretty darn bad. In June of 2016, this article states there was 20+ inches of rain and plenty of flooding. It also says that the attitude toward flood control is laissez faire and parking lots are prioritized before flood control. It makes me angry that they looked the other way. I don't know what the engineering solutions are but this shouldn't have happened.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/06/03/historic_floods_in_houston_texas.html

[ggccvvtt]

17. Hurricane Allen & Alicia

We had to drag all of our carpet out in to the front yard to dry it out. I was so young - don't remember if we re-installed or went with new. My first dog, Muffin, was an outdoor dog (bed in the garage closet next to the lawn mower) was terrified.

[herding cats]

23. This has been an ongoing problem in Houston for decades.

Houston keeps paving over the soil thus creating more runoff not to mention building in flood prone areas. Some day the perfect storm will hit Houston and the price for these decades of looking the other way, and poor planning in general, will be the lives of hundreds or even thousands of people.

You may be interested in this article:

Houston is a sitting duck for the next big hurricane. Why isn’t Texas ready?
http://grist.org/climate-energy/houston-is-a-sitting-duck-for-the-next-big-hurricane-why-isnt-texas-ready/

[AtheistCrusader]

30. The hurricane is doubling back. So... perfect storm has pretty much arrived.

[Hulk]

45. Past time to address land planning issues

I've seen this happen on a small scale here in Portland, Oregon with Johnson Creek. The flooding is a constant threat in the rainy season.
They have built on the hillsides that used to absorb the rainfall, and now the hill sides just flush everything down hill, and the floods are a constant threat
All of these present day flood plains need to be backing up and addressing the future flood issues.
Maybe there is no solution, but they had better do something now.

[calimary]

32. Welcome to DU to you, too, SharonKatz!

Maybe it's because flooding like this happens so rarely, and people get complacent? I heard this one described as "a 100-year flood."

Here in SoCal, we have earthquakes. The big ones happen mighty rarely, too. And we can get complacent, as well. But the building codes are really stringent now. And sometimes it seems as though inspectors are crawling all over construction sites. Seems like a necessity, regardless how annoying or expensive it might be.

Pennywise/pound-foolish - something most CONservatives and republi-CONS are, on overtime. The entire reagan era was a celebration of that. Hate on paying taxes. Cut everywhere you can. And then a disaster happens and you're unprepared and thoroughly screwed.

[gopiscrap]

48. welcome to du

[Lokilooney]

15. And unfortunately the worst is yet to come

The current models show the storm heading south east out to sea, strengthening then going north directly hitting Houston. I have a bad feeling about this one.

[gopiscrap]

49. belated welcome to du

[yuiyoshida]

18. They built the ark in the wrong place!

I have been in two major floods in my life, both horrible , my heart goes to all of you caught up it that.

[vkkv]

19. I Live in California, the "land of fruits & nuts" and earthquakes and wildfires brought on to us by

the "God" that is worshiped by Republican lands like Texas, OK & Kansas.

I'm so sorry though for all of the peace-loving liberals in Houston, truly.

My own house here in the Sierra foothills was threatened by the historic Detwiler Fire this last July.

See: Republic Of Texas, pulling oneself up by their own bootstraps, corrupt Gov. Greg Abbot, Rep. Gohmert and all the other nut cases that the Republic Of Texas elects. I'm sure they'll begin to appreciate TAX PAYER FUNDED EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE at this time - then they'll conveniently forget about it.

[BigmanPigman]

25. I wrote a similar post yesterday

and had to delete it right away because someone said I was so " fucking heartless". I am glad that I read your post. I do not feel it is heartless at all. It is realistically calling out hypocrisy and "do unto others". The GOP's motto is "hypocrisy".

[vkkv]

28. I did delete my first post that was a lot more angry.. TX Reps and other GOP'sters from

other states voted AGAINST AID for Hurricane Sandy the fucking bastards.. and TX voters don't fight for better Reps it seems.
I feel really bad for the people in Houston, they will get hosed again by not getting sufficient help. Most all of the help will go to big business.

Thanks for you reply.

[BigmanPigman]

29. I feel bad for Houston and the other urban and southern TX

counties since they are all blue but have to suffer due to being outnumbered by all the red areas.

Sometimes I wish Fed and State aid could be given specifically to those based on how they voted. When I wrote that I was derided and shunned by a DUer. It sure would make people think twice before they go to the voting booth in the future. People do not consider how their votes effect people until it has a definite and detrimental effect on them personally. This was my point. Ran Paul and Ted Cruz are prime examples.

[calimary]

33. I totally get where you're coming from, BigmanPigman.

I have to fight, HARD, to fend off immediate reactions along the lines of "karma for voting republi-CON?"

Yet there's real pain and suffering there. And we have to remind ourselves of that. (At least I certainly do.) But I confess, sometimes I can be as "fucking heartless" toward the red states as anyone else here. And for that I apologize.

I've found that sometimes it helps to remember the message of Matthew 25: 35-45 - the one about "whatever you do to the least of these." I sure get up on my soapbox about it, here, enough times, when it applies to other people...

[Hulk]

46. X's 1,000,000

dRumpf is trying to cut FEMA funding. Ignorant jackass.

[Dopers_Greed]

21. It's crazy

I know it's not the time to be pointing fingers, but of course, governments were completely unprepared.

And the Orange Manchild can't even be bothered to stop tweeting red meat to his base during this catastrophe.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

26. Water Level Monitoring

To gain perspective, I've been watching bayou, river and lake levels at these two sites:

A. USGS Flood Event Viewer:
http://stn.wim.usgs.gov/fev/#HarveyAug2017
Notes:
1. Click on "Map Layers", then add "Real-Time Stream Gage". Click on any black triangle to observe the water level graph.
2. Click on "Base Maps" and add "Streets" for a better view.
3. Drag the map where you want, and zoom in and out using (+) and (-).

B. Harris County Flood Warning System:
https://www.harriscountyfws.org/GageDetail/Index/830?span=24%20Hours&v=rainfall
Notes:
1. Click on the "Stream Elevation" tab. You should see a graph showing a profile of that location and current and historic levels.
2. In the two upper selector windows, select the "Agency" and "Location" to observe water levels at a desired point.

Note that from time to time, many of the sensors go out of service due to storm damage, but that is usually noted.

Levels in most of the rivers and lakes are scary-high and rising.

[octoberlib]

36. Great resources. Thanks for posting!

[KY_EnviroGuy]

39. Scary

Glad to share those. It's worrying to follow the major river (Brazos, San Jacinto and Sabine) monitoring points all the way North-to-South, as they're still rising.

It appears they started dumping the hell out of Lake Houston on the night of the 24th.
See: https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?site_no=295554095093401

It's interesting to see the properties of the water (pH, turbidity, etc.) change, I assume as the old lake water is purged out and fresh hurricane water becomes dominant.

Also noted that with the bayou monitors around Houston - once they flood over their banks, the monitor flattens out, which makes sense and that's when people's property will flood.

[Motley13]

27. I feel for you, I have been through Andrew

but Andrew came in, blew everything down & quickly left, it didn't linger for days & it wasn't a wet one.

That was 1992 & still people are recovering.

[dawnie51]

34. That's why this talk of evacuation is crazy....

evacuate to where? Millions of people, on the highways, many without fundage. Go to where? Who could accommodate this many people, with their myriad needs? New Orleans was a small town in comparison to Houston, and they couldn't get those people out in time.

[Blue_true]

41. How much high ground is in the city and surburbs in terms of square miles? nt

[Xipe Totec]

42. Not much

The flatness of the local terrain, when combined with urban sprawl, has made flooding a recurring problem for the city. Downtown stands about 50 feet (15 m) above sea level, and the highest point in far northwest Houston is about 125 feet (38 m) in elevation.

Houston is essentially swampland, prone to flooding. Underpinning Houston's land surface are unconsolidated clays, clay shales, and poorly cemented sands up to several miles deep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston

[Blue_true]

43. Wow. You guys may be American Holland in a few decades.

Like a person living in Florida can talk. At least our sand drains fast, but I am not sure how that works when the seas enchroach into land.