A levee south of Houston along the Brazos River has reportedly failed in the Columbia Lakes area near the town of West Columbia. On Sunday, the local sheriff’s department visited homes in the region, handing out dire warnings as the Brazos approached flood stage. Now, with the river over 10’ higher than where it stood at that time, levees protecting low-lying towns and homes in an area of lakes and reservoirs appears to have been breached. Warnings have gone out that those in the area should leave immediately.
Officials in Brazoria County, south of Houston, said a levee at Columbia Lakes had been breached, tweeting: "Get out now!"
Meanwhile, on the west side of Houston, Addicks Dam is overflowing.
Engineers have tried to prevent nearby communities from being inundated by releasing some of the water held by the Addicks dam.
But flood control official Jeff Lindner says water levels are now over the height of the reservoir edge.
Rain is still falling ...
Tropical Storm Harvey is now off the Texas coast, carrying sustained winds of 45 mph and moving north toward Louisiana at 5 mph. Additional rainfall in the Houston/Galveston area should be between 5 and 10 inches. Louisiana can expect an additional 12 inches over the next 48 hours.
Houston is currently experiencing its third “500-year-flood” in the last decade. That’s not as counterintuitive as it may seem. A 100-year-flood doesn’t mean “happens once in a hundred years.” It means “has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year.” So a 500-year-flood has a 1 in 500 chance of happening in any given year. Two back to back years of 500-year flooding, which Houston has just experienced, isn’t impossible. It just has about 1 in 250,000 odds. Which would be an amazing coincidence, like hitting the disaster lotto. Except …
Not only did the warmer water fuel the storm’s sudden, deadly burst to a category 4 storm Friday afternoon, according to climate scientists like Mann, the larger impact of climate change on the motion of weather systems may have helped the system stay in place, hovering over the rain-soaked region, and further amplifying an already unprecedented disaster.
When the dice are loaded, the odds no longer apply.