Many here have inquired about the storm, still fresh on our minds in the Houston area. Most every one of the dozen or so bayous in the Houston area caused home flooding.
One mile north of where we live is the SW corner of Barker reservoir. The Buffalo bayou flows from just NW of Katy Texas down south of Katy under 99/The Grand Parkway and into the reservoir. From there out through the flood gates on the NE side of the reservoir east into Houston and finally into the ship channel.
Pictures below are of the dredging of Buffalo bayou, to remove the silt that came in with the flooding, just inside the Barker reservoir, east of 99/The Grand Parkway. I took these pictures while my wife and I were riding our bicycles yesterday through out the many miles of side walks along the bayous.
Click any picture to zoom in.
Shockingly full of silt. The bayou capacity is typically about the width between the row of trees on both sides of the bayou. If you see tan silt, it should not be there. All is normally green. The blue pick up on the right side of the screen, under the yellow boom, represents where the normal width of the bayou is located. And the depth of the bayou at this point is about 8' higher than normal. All brought in from 4 days of rain.
A little further away. Again the green grass on the left side of the picture is the normal boundary, all of the tan silt in front of the grass was not there days before the storm. Note the "Y" where a small tributary joins Buffalo bayou.
This is that small tributary that enters Buffalo bayou. Notice the line of dump trucks coming in to haul away the silt. We saw a dozen or so trucks all along the bayou. This has been going on for a month. This picture was taken about 1/3 of the way across an 80' long foot bridge.
About 1 mile into the reservoir and at the Mason Street bridge you can see the concrete banks, near right, and far side behind the silt near the power poles, and small forest of new trees that have come up in the last 8 weeks. All of that will have to be removed to restore to pre-storm conditions.
This is how far the bayou was out of its banks a week after the rains stopped. This is about 1 mile south of the bayou. The bridge rails you see near the edge of the water are simply at a drainage ditch. I was standing near the top of the reservoir levee spillway. This was the shallow end of the reservoir. It got deeper to the right/east. Developers were totally at fault for ignoring the engineers warnings to not build businesses and homes inside the reservoir a few decades ago.