I am watch on youtube a video of the flooding in Houston and a lot expensive houses flooded out.

[Igel]

3. Yeah, it's hit or miss.

I keep saying there are two floods layered on top of each other.

Those caused by lack of adequate drainage of *manmade* systems. Often that's the poor areas in the north/northwest part of the city. They used to drain fine. Then neighborhoods just beyond them hooked into their storm drain system and overloaded it--in fact, in some areas higher neighborhoods' drainage systems cause the older systems to back up and gush water *out* instead of in.

Then there's the bayou system that collects the water by means of natural watersheds. The nicer houses are along the bayous. Many had flood mitigation measures in place--they were built up from the street. But the 40" of rain just overwhelmed them.

Good to hear you didn't flood. Doing errands the last few days some neighborhoods looked like they just had a thunderstorm and nothing more. Some you could tell there was some flooding, but you had to look really closely at things like water marks on berms or sand patterns on sidewalks and parking lots. In others a few structures were affected and you could tell by the piles of gypsum board and carpet by the side of the road. Others had lots of piles of debris, and in some you could see the highwater mark on the buildings and nobody'd come along to start working on them yet.

Driving along some of the main E-W surface roads I was really aware of how when the road dipped significantly the roadside frequently got greener and more open, though, and when the road rose the area seemed to have more buildings on it.