I hope you guys (and others) are OK - I just heard about the rain there in Houston.
Dave
- posted
17 years ago
Ping Leon, Swingman
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- posted
17 years ago
Dry as a bone here! Well, not quite, but it didn't even stop me from my morning walk.
There are always those areas that flood here in the gentlest of rain, and when someone spits on the sidewalk it causes a traffic jam, which is where most of the sensational news appears to be coming from ... the freeways.
Sometime in the 70's the engineers in power decided that it would be a good idea to lower city streets about 3' below grade and use them, in conjunction with storm sewers, to channel storm runoff toward the south ... the problem is they never bothered to see what was happening downstream and that shortsightedness is at the root of all the ruckus today, more so than the weather.
In any event, thanks for the thought ...
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- posted
17 years ago
Thank you Dave. I have had 1.25" of rain since Saturday. Literally 17 miles due East of me, the SE Houston metro area had 11" of rain in about 4 hours. The bayous tend to flow from West to East. Some parts of east Houston may not get much rain but get the overflow from the bayous. Today they got both. In June, 5 years ago the north east side of Houston got in excess of 28" of rain one weekend and Swingman was waste deep and lived SW of downtown Houston. Today I am sure Swingman is enjoying and thanking himself again for rebuilding on a much higher elevation foundation. I think his house will be high and dry when his next door neighbor has 3' of water in their house.
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- posted
17 years ago
Listening to the woman reporter "on the scene" this morning, she exclaimed that the water was as deep as tires on the truck. Yes, the truck tires were on the ground and the water was touching the tires. GEEZ!!
Another funny note, have you ever noticed the reporters and their camera men are on the scene and talking to stranded motorists and commenting how dumb it is to get out in this mess? Funny how they have that perfect 20/20 hind site and just happen to be caught up in the same mess also.
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- posted
17 years ago
Glad to hear you guys are fine. You have to love those civil engineers. I was building some new hangars at a local airport and needed to drain the tarmac into a 36" stormdrain that was onsite. They decided it could be too much water (for a 50 year storm) and made me cut a surface drain to a street drain 700' away. No problem except there was only a 16" fall in that 700'! Now with any rain, the surface drain backs up but the 36" drain is damn near dry! Go Figure!
Dave
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17 years ago
Good to hear you are high and dry! (Well I'm not so sure about the high part!) The news here showed guys in rowboats going down streets, and someting about 20 feet of rain in 10 minutes or somting to that effect! The news does seem to find the most sensational parts, exaggerate then put it on the air. If the news was accurate, we here in sunny SoCal would either be shaking, being blown apart, burning up, polluting the air and oceans or just falling into the Pacific. Yet were still here.
Dave
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