Houston braces for flooding as more torrential rain hits city

Torrential rains pose threat for Harris County residents

HOUSTON—officials had one message for the 4 million residents of Harris County Saturday morning: Harvey’s not done yet.

The storm crashed into the Coastal Bend late Friday night as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, bringing torrential rains, storm surge and powerful 130 mph winds to the towns just north of Corpus Christi. In Houston, 200 miles east along the coast, the situation was far more easygoing, though neighboring Fort Bend County was hit harder.

Two to three inches of rain fell in waves across much of urban Houston overnight. Downpours would suddenly begin and stop — sometimes with halfhour lulls in between — as the bands of Harvey swirled overhead. Blustery winds replaced steady breezes, which would just as easily give way to perfectly still skies.

Houston’s flood-prone streets seemed to hold up well overnight, with just a few reports of localized flooding. Harris County’s online flood warning system at 8 a.m. showed that all but one monitoring station reported its creeks and bayous remained in their banks, though officials said water levels were rising.

The local electric utility, CenterPoint Energy, reported that 62,000 across the area had lost power as of 6:30 a.m. But thanks to Houston’s size, that number of outages amounted to about 2.5 percent of the city losing power. By 11:30 a.m., CenterPoint had whittled the number down to about 32,000.

Some in central city neighborhoods even woke up to some sunlight peaking through the clouds.

“It’s difficult to get some folks to take it seriously when they see blue skies,” said Harris County spokesman Francisco Sanchez.

But that’s the challenge officials here face as Harvey, downgraded Saturday afternoon to a tropical storm, slowly drifts and continues to pump in bands of rain across the Houston area as the region’s usual flooding problems began.

Local television station KTRK broadcast images showing Keegan’s Bayou, in the city’s far southwest corner, rapidly rising. And Houston Police took to Twitter to warn that standing water was building on the elevated portions of some freeways.

Some inner city neighborhoods, such as Montrose and the Heights, stayed almost entirely dry, while a band of storms pounded suburban and refinery towns, like Pasadena, to the east — quickly dropping upwards of 2 inches of rain.

Harvey was rougher in Fort Bend County — about 40 miles south and west of Houston, toward where the storm slammed ashore — where there were reports of at least two tornadoes that damaged several homes and businesses.

One touched down in a suburban neighborhood in Missouri City, damaging more than 50 homes, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The second possible twister hit a building along Interstate 10 in Katy, about 30 miles west of Houston’s west, ripping apart an auto parts store.

The rapidly rising Brazos River forced state officials to evacuate the Ramsey, Terrell and Stringfellow state prisons in Brazoria County. Authorities said they were moving the inmates to facilities in East Texas.

But the threat for the Houston region remains. It’s the story of not the first 2 or 3 inches of rain that fell Friday night, but the 20 or 30 inches that meteorologists fear will follow in a possible repeat of Tropical Storm Allison.

Harvey is expected to slowly drift up the coast toward Houston, bringing days of rain—like Allison did.