Houston storm history · September 17 – 20, 2019

Tropical Storm Imelda

A weak tropical storm that stalled and produced extreme rain, flooding northeast Harris County and closing Interstate 10 east of Houston.

Every bayou, hour by hour

0 ft 15 ft 29.9 ft (this storm's peak) no reading Every cell is a real archived USGS reading for that bayou, that hour — nothing is interpolated between gauges. Color scale is calibrated to this storm alone; it is not comparable across different storms. Hover a cell for the exact value.

Imelda formed quickly just off the Texas coast on September 17, 2019, and moved inland near Freeport as a tropical storm. By the usual measures it was weak, with modest winds and little storm surge. What made it dangerous was that it slowed down and stalled over southeast Texas for two days while a steady feed of Gulf moisture kept the rain going.

The worst totals fell east of Houston. The National Weather Service recorded 44.29 inches near Fannett in Jefferson County, which makes Imelda one of the wettest tropical cyclones on record in the United States. Houston was on the western edge of the heaviest rain, but that edge still brought about 10 to 15 inches to much of the city and roughly 18 to 20 inches to parts of Harris County.

In Harris County the hardest-hit areas were in the northeast: Humble, Kingwood, Aldine, and neighborhoods along Greens Bayou, Halls Bayou, Hunting Bayou and the San Jacinto River. On September 19, intense rain bands set off flash flooding during the morning, stranding drivers on freeways and flooding homes that had also flooded during Harvey two years earlier. There were dozens of water rescues.

Interstate 10 east of Houston became one of the defining images of the storm. The freeway flooded near the San Jacinto River, and runaway barges struck the I-10 bridge, which closed that stretch for days while inspectors checked the damage. Across southeast Texas, Imelda was blamed for five deaths.

Imelda is a reminder that storm category tells you little about flood risk. A slow tropical storm can drop more rain on a neighborhood than a fast-moving major hurricane.

In the replay, watch the bayous in north and northeast Houston rise sharply over a short window, compared with the slower, citywide build-up during Harvey.

Sources

← Back to the map