2018 was a quiet year, and a good thing too. We didn't have the wherewithal to deal with anything like that in Houston in 2018. Now it's 2019, and it seemed like it was going to be another quiet year. There had been little talk of hurricanes or tropical storms so far this year.
Monday, that changed in a hurry. There were a bunch of clouds just off shore in the gulf of Mexico that looked like they might coalesce into something dangerous. It wouldn't be a big wind event, not a hurricane, but the way it was acting made it look like we might have a major flood event. Our weather guy was warning us all, it should hit on Wednesday. Our managers sent out emails telling us to put our affairs in order so that we could be prepared to cover this thing around the clock. Twelve hour shifts were likely.
I packed up the car with a couple changes of clothes, a blanket, a pillow, my toothbrush, and a comb. I was hoping it wouldn't be that bad, but just in case. In the back of my mind, was the specter of the day I spent stuck at a Walgreens because of a big storm that hit our neighborhood in May. My car was not going to make it through any flooded streets, as demonstrated by that experience. I had no idea what might come, so I wanted to be ready. I brought a bunch of food in and put it in the fridge at work to get me through if I needed to stay the night at work for a day...or two.
Tuesday, the storm formed and earned a name. This was now Tropical Storm Imelda. And it came early. Not Wednesday, but Tuesday it hit. It didn't take long for it to disappoint, however. It moved faster than expected across the Gulf of Mexico, and therefore didn't gather as much moisture to dump on us. It was raining like crazy, and flooding in some flood prone areas, but mostly we were high and dry. I had to stay until 1:30 AM at work, just in case something happened, but nothing did...other than me earning three hours of overtime pay.
It rained pretty good on Wednesday morning, then started to peter out. My drive to work was pretty easy, and by the afternoon, things looked like this outside:
Suddenly, at about 5:00 PM, things changed. The skies darkened up, and thunder started rumbling outside, and we could hear the rain pounding on the roof. The newsroom started buzzing with activity. The storm was taking a turn for the worse again. We needed to get our resources in place to cover it. There was a new tornado warning in east Harris County and west Chambers county.
Thankfully, when things like that are happening, it doesn't pertain all that much to me. I edit the recorded video, but when things are happening live right now, there doesn't tend to be recorded video. Instead, they point the camera and transmit live stuff. But this story pertained to me a little more than I expected it to.
My phone rang, and it was my wife on the other end of the line.
"Is there a tornado warning right now?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"Where is it for? Is it in Baytown or Mont Belvieu?"
Sadly, I didn't know. I hadn't paid that much attention, because the newsroom commotion usually doesn't pertain to me. They were organizing live crews in the field, not editors sitting on their can in front of a computer screen. I had to jump on the internet and look it up, and yes, east Harris County and west Chambers County could most definitely be Baytown or Mont Belvieu.
"Looks like it is right there next to you, baby. You might want to hightail it out of there as fast as you can...but also, see if you can't point your phone at it and get some video we can throw up on the news too."
Well, she did hightail it out of there, but didn't manage to get any video. It was already receding into the distance by the time she had called me, so the only way to get video would have been to go all storm chaser, turn around and head right toward the tornado, which would have been contrary to the first set of instructions.
Other people were closer, and got pictures and video that we used on our news. A guy sent out this tweet, where you can see the tornado that was chasing my wife. And here are some stills that I found on the internet:
She made it home okay, calling me about an hour later to report in and put my mind at ease, and again, it seemed like the worst was over. Imelda must have been done toying with us, and had moved on to bother the folks north of us in Nacodoches or Tyler or Shreveport or something. My drive home from work was pretty uneventful. It was barely raining anymore, just a light sprinkle really.
After I got home, I messed around on my computer editing my Journey to One-derland update video for a while, and I could hear the rain strengthen and start pounding again, but I dismissed it. That strengthening and weakening rain had been going on all day. I still thought we were done.
My first clue that something had changed was that at 4:00 AM, our kids' school district finally decided to cancel classes for the day. I missed that notification, however, because I was fast asleep.
Instead, in the morning, I awoke to thunder, lightning, and rain like I had yet to see since the storm arrived. Our house was being pounded relentlessly by Imelda. She wanted us out of this existence and was doing all that she could to see us gone. Look at this crazy video:
A few minutes later, I went back out in the backyard to get some more video, because the thunder had stepped it up further. It doesn't come across as well, because I believe the phone adjusts the audio automatically, but that thunder was loud enough to make a person jump out of their skin each time it hit.
Our cat disappeared under the couch, and didn't come out for a few hours she was so scared.
I didn't realize how bad things had gotten, despite having stood there taking video of the deluge. My wife went and looked out the front of the house, and then shouted for us all to come look. This is what we saw:
That's our street, our front walk, the front edge of our lawn, all underwater. When I saw that, I freaked out.
We never saw anything like that even with the catastrophic storm known as Hurricane Harvey, which flooded nearly the entire neighborhood I live in, along with the rest of the Houston area.
Yet here it was. The street under a foot of water.
Because we'd never flooded in Harvey, I assumed we were untouchable. If Harvey couldn't sink us, then what else possibly could, right?
But maybe not after all. This hadn't happened before but the rain was still falling hard, and the water was so very close to our front door.
We still don't have flood insurance, because, after all, we were untouchable. Even Harvey couldn't get us.
How ruined would we be if it came up the lawn any further?
I really wanted to get on the phone and get some flood insurance coverage, but it was too late. They don't cover you starting the day that you call. It takes two months before it kicks in.
So, yeah, I was really getting scared seeing this flood on our doorstep.
Here's a couple videos of the flooded street as well if you want an even better look at how it was.
What could we do? Nothing really. It was too late for insurance, too late to leave town, too late to leave the house at all. None of our cars could get out of the driveway at all. We just had to hope and pray that the storm would move on and let us be. So, that's what we did, and that's what happened.
The rain kept falling, but not as heavily, and the steady flow of the street river eventually emptied our little tributary out. It lowered little by little. The guy who had his car parked on the street was finally able to safely move it off the curb and up on the driveway. And, as the day wore on, it was time for me to leave for work.
They really needed me to be there, because my chief editor had picked this week of all weeks to take vacation. That meant that we were already working with a skeleton crew. If I didn't make it, then one editor would have to do it all by himself, and work hours of overtime to boot.
I didn't want to do that to my coworker, so I went out on the roads, despite my wife's objections, and gave it a try. I didn't even make it a full mile from the house before I came to an intersection that was still flooded out. Jacked-up trucks were still splashing their way through, but I wasn't willing to test my Ford Fiesta in the same way. I was going to have to wait a little longer before I could get out of here.
I called my boss and gave him the bad news. He told me that it wouldn't have done me any good even if I could get out, because the traffic on the roads was so bad I'd be in bumper-to-bumper for hours. I'd never make it there as it was. He told me to hold tight for a while, and try again in an hour or two.
I turned back around and went home, grateful that I could still make it back, and wouldn't be spending hours at a Walgreens like I had in May. My wife wasn't at all surprised to see me back. We got to have a little more family time while I waited to try again.
After an hour passed, I gave it another shot. This time I almost made it four miles before I came to the spot where a stream that usually flows under the road was now flowing right over the top of it. Here, even the jacked-up trucks weren't risking it. When I saw them turning tail and running, I didn't even consider it. I did stop to get a picture, however, and I texted that picture to my boss, telling him I wasn't able to make it out yet.
I mentioned the stalled out car that was stuck halfway across, just for a little added emphasis. He told me to stay safe, and to try again in an hour or two.
I said I would, but I was pretty sure that I wasn't ever going to make it to work. I felt really bad for my poor coworker who was going to have to do it all himself, and work a twelve hour day while doing it. That really sucked.
When I called my wife to let her know I was coming home, I was passing the McDonald's, and I asked if she wanted me to pick up some dinner while I was out. She was game for that, so I pulled into the parking lot, but some guys in yellow vests out front waved me on through. Apparently the McDonald's was closed. I had seen that the grocery store was still open though when I passed it a while ago, so I decided to go there instead.
It wasn't as crazy as it had been back in 2017 when we visited the store during Hurricane Harvey, but the place was definitely jumping. Of course, this might be its usual situation at this time of day. I wouldn't know, because I was usually at work at this time of day.
Something about the energy of all the humanity teeming inside this Kroger made me really want to do something fun. I walked past the soda aisle, then turned back and went down and grabbed a few bottles of soda for the kids. I wasn't going to drink any, I've finally learned my lesson with that, but they still love it. We could have a bit of a party, a Tropical Storm Imelda party. We were all home for the day. I could call the kids down out of their rooms, and we could have some fun together.
I grabbed some chocolate chips, because what is more fun than making cookies together? I got us two frozen pizzas, and a carton of ice cream...and some enchilada sauce that my wife wanted for a recipe she was making later in the week, because why waste the trip right? And I headed home with an instant party.
I called the kids down, we put on some music, and we had some fun together. We whipped up the cookie dough together, and got the pizzas started cooking. When they finished, and everybody dug in, and we sat down together to watch a movie. The girls had been watching their way through the Firefly TV series, and now the only thing left for them to watch was the big feature film finale Serenity. I didn't need any encouragement to join them, of course, Firefly is one of my favorite all-time things. So, we sat down together and watched the movie.
I did have to leave before the film was finished, though, to give it one last try. I didn't expect to be able to get to work at this point, and now that it was getting dark, I wasn't going to be willing to try a fourth time if this one didn't work. It was treacherous enough out there in daylight. If I couldn't see the flooded street before I hit the water, then I'd be in real trouble.
I drove the four miles out to the same spot where I was thwarted before, hoping that the water level had lowered and I might be able to pass freely, but it looked mostly unchanged.
The only real difference was that now there were two stalled out cars out in the middle of the water instead of just the one that was there before. I took another picture, texted it to my boss, and asked him to tell my coworker that I'd hung out to dry that I was sorry to have to do this to him. Then I went home, and we watched the rest of the movie together. Then we had some ice cream with cookies that we'd made. I even had a breakdown and ate a cookie myself. I guess it was a bad idea to bring home the chocolate chips. Watch my update video that's coming up for more on that story.
I found it to be a pretty enjoyable evening with the family, and was glad that A) we didn't have any worse problems to deal with than the inability to get to work and B) we were able to turn the negative of the storm into a positive time together with each other. Imelda wasn't all bad...at least, not for us.
I'm sure there will be a decent amount of damage around the area, and people that we know will have had their homes flooded and ruined and will need some support. So, there will be need for help from us and the rest of the community, but for now, I'm just going to enjoy the time we had together, and leave the worries to tomorrow.
1 comment:
Wow, that's a lot of water! Glad you at least got a good family day out of it.
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