Tropical Storm Allison - Eight years after

[HURAKAN]

Time flies fast. WOW! Eight years.

[HURAKAN]

1227 UTC 11 June 2001 radar reflectivity image from Mobile, AL. Note the eye-like feature over southern Mississippi and the squall line to the east. The intensity was near 40 kt at this time.

Link: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/2001allison.html#TABLE1

[Ed Mahmoud]

My wife was pregnant with my oldest, we were coming back from the OB/GYN a few days (Friday?) after the initial landfall, and very black clouds rolled in. It rained heavily, there were a few tornado warnings in Montgomery County, and while I was impressed by rain like one saw in the heaviest 15 minute thunderstorm, except it lasted all evening, we went to bed.

Woke up after midnight, my wife's cousin living near the creek at BW 8 and Veteran's Memorial (they call it a bayou, and it becomes one further East, but it is usually a small creek near where we live) called because water was in their home. My wife said all was fine, went back to bed, but i went and checked, water was almost to the doors.

It did come into our garage, I stuffed towels under the doors, we later had mud marks on the doors about an inch up, but everything stayed safe inside.


We were the last house in our neighborhood, that has an almost imperceptable slope to the Southeast towards a creek that feeds the above mentioned Greens Bayou, that didn't flood.

Sandra and James house, about 6 feet of water, and a weekend tearing out drywall and ripping up muddy carpets and padding. Also her grandparents house. They were out of town, they live just inside I-610 near I-45 in the 'Northside' barrio, they flooded, and a woman leaving Vara's, the neighborhood sports bar, and two men who tried to follow because they knew she was intoxicated, got swept away and drowned.

[Category 5]

I'll never forget when the remnents game up here. The storm drains backed up and flooded the drainage ditches. Needless to say giving us a place to cool off from the ungodly humidity.

Unfortunately, the memories werent so fond in Texas.

[vbhoutex]

It is a week and a night I will never forget. Total for the week at my house was 16+" with 11"+ coming that Friday night. I was online all night with different people across Houston when I wasn't trying to keep water from coming in the back of the house. I had a digital rain gauge then and I calculated rainfall rates of 6" per hour in some of the storms. The stories coming in from the people I was online with were incredible and worse than mine. It was definitely a scary night! Ended up helping tear out carpet/drywall, etc. in the neighborhood Ed is talking about(some church members).

[CrazyC83]

Hard to believe that a weak tropical storm in the US could do $6 billion in damage - more than many recent major hurricanes - and kill about 50 people. That was definitely a lesson learned that storms don't have to be strong (or even organized) to be destructive.

[micktooth]

Our house and our entire neighborhood flooded. We were living in River Ridge, just outside of New Orleans. Not a very nice memory for us

[jeff]

My entire subdivision flooded...I had 38" of water in the house from Greens Bayou. By far one of thw worst urban floods in US history with 73,000 homes flooded in Harris County alone and 81,000 flooded in SE TX. Highest rainfal rate recorded was 6.3 inches in 1 hour along middle Greens Bayou and just under 27.0 inches in 12 hours on June 8-9, 01. However the Allison 1 hour rainfall rates were exceeded on April 18th, 2009 when an ALERT gage station recorded an astounding 6.9 inches in 1 hour along Clear Creek.

[LizzardInFlorida]

I lived in Houston at the time in an apartment complex on Buffalo Bayou.

I woke at 3 a.m. to hear people outside yelling - when I went to investigate the entire bottom floor of our parking garage had filled up within minutes, and my car had floated 20 ft. away.

SUVs were floating around the garage like corks - horns blasting non-stop. As the water continued to deepen, most of the bottom floor apartments were inundated with water.

The next morning our side of the Bayou was as island and all the streets were flooded. So much damage - it was terrible.

I was starting a new job that Monday and my car was gone. It took 1 month before I could locate an old beat up rental in the city of Houston. Very Bad memories.