Texas sunshine forecast; storms, flooding let up

Houston damage tops $45M

A motorist stops to help another driver stranded in high water Saturday in Dallas. Parts of Texas were finally beginning to see relief Sunday from rain and flooding.
A motorist stops to help another driver stranded in high water Saturday in Dallas. Parts of Texas were finally beginning to see relief Sunday from rain and flooding.

DALLAS -- Most of Texas was set to get its first period of extended sunshine in weeks, allowing surging rivers to recede as emergency-management officials turn their attention to cleanup efforts in such places as Houston, where damage estimates top $45 million.

Parts of the state were finally beginning to recover Sunday from weeks of rain and flooding that have made Texas a place of extremes: severe drought conditions earlier in the year that have given way to unprecedented rainfall in some areas. At least 31 people have been killed in storms that began in Texas and Oklahoma over Memorial Day weekend. Twenty-seven of the deaths have been in Texas, and at least 10 people were still missing over the weekend.

The plentiful sun forecast for much of the state this week was expected by meteorologists to allow engorged rivers such as the Trinity in North and East Texas, the Brazos southwest of Houston and Nueces in South Texas to flush large volumes of water into the Gulf of Mexico.

More than 10 inches of rain have fallen during the past 30 days across nearly the entire central and eastern portion of the state -- from the Texas Panhandle to the Mexico border. Isolated areas have received 15 to more than 20 inches. It was the wettest month on record in Texas, basically ending the state's five-year drought.

Up to 4 inches of rain soaked the Houston area overnight Saturday, drenching neighborhoods.

Jeff Dyson figured his riverfront neighborhood 20 miles east of Houston was prepared, but then the water started rising.

It kept rising, right up to the base of some of the elevated homes.

"It was 2 inches from getting in there," said Dyson, 44, "We didn't think it would get that close."

His Banana Bend community remained flooded Sunday, washed out by the neighboring San Jacinto River, but water never breached the homes, he said.

It will take a few days for the water to recede and reveal damage on the ground, Dyson said.

"It's going to be a major cleanup. It's going to be two weeks before this place is right," he said.

Kent Prochazka, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration outside Houston, said storms moved into the Gulf of Mexico overnight as a cold front blanketed the region, bringing with it cool, dry air.

"It will give us a chance to dry out and not add any more water to the rivers," Prochazka said, noting that river levels were already falling before the storm and that the effect of a few inches of additional rain was "minimal."

"The fact that we handled 10 to 12 inches of rain in such a short period of time is a testament to the improvements they've made in that flood-control system" around Houston, he said. "Back when I started working in the '90s, if we had that type of event it would have been double, triple the flooding."

National Weather Service meteorologist Dan Reilly in Houston said that "It's looking like there won't be any additional rain this week, and that's good news."

The bad news, forecasters warn, is that the ground remains saturated and rivers and lakes swollen headed into tropical storm season, which begins today.

"We are more vulnerable now than we were before the rain," Reilly said.

Water authorities near Houston and elsewhere in the state in the coming days have to release rising water from reservoirs but be mindful of flooding that could result along downstream tributaries that are already running over their banks.

In the Houston area, preliminary damage estimates show the flooding from torrential rains will cost at least $45 million, according to Francisco Sanchez with the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. There was more than $25 million in damage to public utilities and infrastructure, he said, and the cost to remove storm debris from bayous, flooded neighborhoods and elsewhere is about $15 million. There's another $4.5 million in damage to buildings and equipment.

There are about 1,500 homes in Harris County, including those in Houston, with some level of flood damage, and this number will increase as damage-assessment teams canvass the region, he said.

Hays County spokesman Laureen Chernow said officials there have recorded at least $32.7 million in damage to public infrastructure after record flooding that overflowed the banks of the Blanco River. Many roads have been closed and two bridges destroyed, Chernow said.

"There are a couple of pillars standing in the riverbed," she said. "It's going to take years to rebuild this whole area."

The flooding in Hays and Blanco counties has claimed 10 lives.

Search crews are continuing to make their way down the Blanco River -- at least 25 miles of the 55-mile stretch contained within Hays County have been searched in a week. That process has slowed as workers make their way downriver and run into increasingly larger piles of debris, Chernow said.

In Fort Bend County south of Houston, several rural communities along the Brazos River were still evacuated Sunday as the river approached its crest at 49.55 feet, but residents were expected to return in the coming days as the water drains, said Jeff Braun, the county's emergency management coordinator.

He credited the suburban county's 100 miles of levees with protecting its major roads and cities.

"This was the biggest rain since most of those went in. This was a good test and a passing grade with flying colors," Braun said, adding that with the exception of some minor street flooding, "everything's dry inside the levees."

Authorities Sunday in Victoria, in South Texas, said more than 160 homes had been flooded or threatened by rising water but that no injuries were reported.

The National Weather Service reports the Guadalupe River crested at 30.19 feet Saturday in Victoria and remained in a major flood stage Sunday. River levels were forecast to drop to a minor flood stage by next weekend.

Veronica Beyer, spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation, said preliminary assessments show there's about $27 million in damage to the state transportation system.

"But clearly we expect that number to go up as the water goes down," she said.

Beyer said about 155 state roads across Texas are still closed due to damage or because they remain under water. Since May 4, when steady rains began to hammer the state, about two-thirds of Texas counties have sustained damage to roads and bridges, she said.

Information for this article was contributed by Allen Reed and David Warren of The Associated Press and by Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times.

A Section on 06/01/2015

Upcoming Events