When I read that the owners of Camp Mystic tried to get certain structures removed from the Guadalupe River floodplain, it rang a bell that finally broke through: The news that, in 2017, a catastrophic flood in Houston was made worse because, wait for it, developers had built entire subdivisions inside a reservoir, but hadn’t told homeowners about it.
Because when they sold the houses, the level of the reservoir was low. Just as, when it’s not flash-flooding, the Guadalupe River is a pleasant stream you want to be close to, not up on a bluff looking down at it. Or as it was before Hurricane Harvey:
The vast basins are dry most of the time, dotted with wooded parks and sports fields, and are contained on their eastern boundaries by large, earthen dams. During rainstorms, floodwater accumulates behind those dams in areas known as “flood pools” and backs up to the west; how far it goes depends on how big the rainstorm is and where it hits.
That system worked well when the reservoirs were surrounded by prairie and rice fields. But in recent decades, development has encroached from all sides. Today, about 14,000 homes are located inside them. During Harvey, when more floodwater accumulated behind the dams than ever before, 5,138 of those homes flooded.
Some local government officials, like Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack, say they’ve warned residents for years during town halls and other public events about the risks of living in or around the reservoirs.
“It is very difficult to make people believe the unbelievable,” Radack said. “No one ever believed the reservoirs would fill.”
This is human nature. No one believed the reservoirs would fill, until they did. No one believed the river would carry away everything in its path, until it did. Living in a flooding city, as I did for 20 years, it’s easy to see this paradox. That river? That brown, stinky ditch? Coming this high? No way. And then it snows and snows, and then it rains and rains, and then the snow melts and combines with the rain, and the next thing you know you’re wearing rubber boots and throwing sandbags.
And that’s the best-case scenario. That’s a slow flood. We all saw the worst-case scenario July 4.
Fort Wayne has taken away a lot of the human factor by turning its floodplain into parkland. But honestly, I haven’t been keeping up. Have they had a major flood recently?
OK, then. A hot weekend. It’s been punishingly hot for a month now. During my Saturday boxing class, I was near a thermometer — it was attached to some fan. It was 83 when we started, and through the 45-minute class I watched it climb, degree by degree, until it topped out at 88. Thought I was going to die. Today was sailing — far more pleasant, but still hot.
How is it where you are?
Deborah said on July 13, 2025 at 10:44 pm
It’s wonderful in Santa Fe right now, at 8:36pm Sunday it’s 68º with a low tomorrow morning of 57º, it was 56º this morning. It seemed like it was going to rain today, cloudy etc, but it never got to us, that’s the bad news. We always need rain.
It will get hot again but right now it’s glorious, and when it’s hot here it’s not humid so it’s not so bad, as you’ve heard me say a million times. But of course we know the center will not hold, you can’t keep having dryness without droughts and fires, then flash floods when it rains way too much too fast, so bummer about the long term.
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alex said on July 13, 2025 at 11:02 pm
No major floods in the Fort recently, but they’ve done a lot to mitigate flooding in the nearly 20 years you’ve been gone, Nance, including a massive tunnel 220 feet underground, and we’re told that it’s been working as intended. We’ve had some major rain events that passed without any of the problems that we used to have without the new infrastructure. And they’re still not done with it. The entrance to Foster Park remains all torn up from the ginormous hole they dug there to drop their excavation equipment and I wonder if it will ever be rose gardens again.
Sweltering weekend here, but we accomplished a bunch of yard work, including installation of a 12×20′ shed tent for our outdoor equipment (and it’s fucking jam packed even at that size) and we did a bunch of work on a boat lift we’re installing so that we won’t have to drag our pontoon boat onto the lawn anymore for winter storage.
We had a nice booze cruise on the boat on Saturday night with friends we happened to run into at a favorite eatery. Sometimes the best fun is spontaneity and no plan.
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susan said on July 14, 2025 at 12:36 am
How is it where you are? 104°
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Deborah said on July 14, 2025 at 7:43 am
This is crazy, 5:42am it’s 54° in Santa Fe, even cooler than predicted.
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Suzanne said on July 14, 2025 at 8:13 am
The heat has been horrible in NE Indiana. Our son was visiting from Phoenix a few weeks ago and said he was ready to return to the dry heat even though the average high temp is in the hundreds. I got an email from our electric company on our bill estimate for the month and yikes! Almost double what was paid the month before and we generally keep it set at 78°. The back of the house with large windows faces west so in the afternoon, shades are pulled as we sit in the semi-darkness to save a few pennies.
Texas also suffers from Republican politicians who believe catastrophic weather and miserable deaths are just the will of God and there’s little that can be done about it. Joni Ernst from Iowa let the true GOP motto out of the bag a few months ago when she stated that “Well, we are all going to die.”
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Dorothy said on July 14, 2025 at 8:48 am
At daybreak today we had a little lightning, some rumbling thunder and lots of rain which slacked off to a steady and reassuring downfall. Just enough trouble to make Nestle shake and pant and pant and shake no matter how many hugs and pets and shhhhhs I gave her. It’s still raining and I dragged her out to do her business, which means I can stop wondering if she was going to do that in the house.
The reassurance is for the thirsty grass and I’m thankful for the steady rain. Last summer we went a very long time without any rain so even a little bit is appreciated.
Happy Monday, all.
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