Flash Flood — Brazoria, Texas

2017-08-26 to 2017-08-29 · near Pearland, Brazoria, Texas

Event narrative

Flash flood waters, from sheet flooding and bayous/creeks coming out of banks, completely inundated hundreds to thousands of homes and businesses. Roads and highways in and around Pearland and south into Manvel, or east of Highway 288 along Highway 6, were flooded and therefore closed for long time periods. Major record flooding of the Brazos, San Bernard and Oyster Creek caused the flooding of hundreds to thousands of vicinity homes, vehicles and businesses. Numerous Roads and homes were inundated with flood waters on east side of Oyster Creek including the Columbia Lakes, Mallard Lakes, Great Lakes, Riverside Estates and Bar X subdivisions as well as homes along CR 39. Other county roads that became impassable due to high flood waters include, but are not limited to, FM 1462, Highways 35 and 90, FM 950, CR 25, 380A, CR 42 and FM 521. The Phillips refinery outside of the town of Sweeny took on water from the west near Little Linville Bayou. Hanson Riverside County Park along the San Bernard River southwest of West Columbia was inundated and water over-topped the Phillips Terminal. Areas around Alvin also flooded.

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 → (29.5927, -95.4067)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 720865. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.