Flash Flood — Harris, Texas

2015-10-31 · near Orr, Harris, Texas

Event narrative

There was widespread flooding across the city of Houston and surrounding areas. The worst flooding occurred across eastern and southern Houston and towns north and east of the city. Numerous roadways were flooded including all main lanes of Highway 288 north of Brays Bayou. High rainfall rates caused Brays Bayou to go out of banks and inundate the Lawndale Wayside part of eastern Houston. Four to five feet of water flowed over North Macgregor Way between Merry Lane and Wildwood Way. High water rescues were conducted by the fire department with a half a foot of water entering Fire Station 26 in southeast Houston near Telephone and Bellfort Streets. Highway 59 at Will Clayton Parkway south of Humble was impassable due to high water. Approximately 40 homes were flooded in the Cloverleaf subdivision near Interstate 10 and Beltway 8. Hunting Bayou went out of banks and flooded neighboring homes. High water rescues were performed on Autumnwood and Wood Shadows Drives near Hunting Bayou. A shopping district and surrounding parking lots were flooded in the Crosby and Barrett areas.

Wider weather episode

A strong upper level storm system, combined with high moisture levels to produce a bands of excessive rainfall that caused flash flooding across Fort Bend, Harris and Liberty Counties. Thunderstorms rapidly developed shortly after midnight on the 31st over Matagorda and Fort Bend Counties and moved into Harris County around 1:00 a.m. The thunderstorms trained or moved over the same areas between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. with significant rainfall occurring over the southwest and south-central portions of Harris County into the east-central part of the county. After a brief break between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. an additional round of thunderstorms slowly moved across Harris County from west to east producing additional heavy rainfall and worsening ongoing flooding conditions. Saturated grounds from previous heavy rainfall the week before coupled with intense short term rainfall rates resulted in widespread flooding. There was one confirmed flood related death and one possible flood related death.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (29.9792, -95.5426)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 604968. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.