Flash Flood — Polk, Texas

2017-08-26 · near Onalaska, Polk, Texas

Event narrative

There was high flood water on roads FM 3126 and FM 356 along the eastern shore of Lake Livingston.

The lowest homes and businesses within close vicinity of the lake, Trinity River and Long King Creek flooded. Roads along the southern end of Lake Livingston such as FM 3278 were inaccessible, FM 3128 and FM 1988 near Long King Creek were flooded. Major lowland flooding occurred on the Trinity River near Goodrich.

Wider weather episode

Harvey made landfall as a category 4 hurricane near Rockport, Texas during the evening of August 25th. The storm then weakened to a tropical storm and slowed, looping back and tracking over SE Texas then back over the Gulf of Mexico making a second landfall along the Louisiana coast during the early morning hours of August 30th. Over that 5 day period over Southeast Texas TS Harvey produced catastrophic flooding with a large area of 30 to 60 inches of rain, 23 tornadoes, tropical storm force winds and a moderate storm surge near Matagorda Bay. In some of the heavier bands rain fell at a rate of over 5 inches per hour. This copious record amount of rain over a led to catastrophic flooding. Thousands of homes, businesses, and roads were flooded due to flash flooding and sheet flow from long duration intense rain. Main stem rivers and adjoining tributaries, creeks and bayous reached full capacity and came out of their banks and this also contributed to the massive flooding across southeastern Texas.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (30.8564, -95.1897)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 720805. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.