One Monday afternoon, smack in the middle of October, in the middle of a meeting, our computers went dead. When we walked out to see what was going on we saw that the sky in the west had turned end-of-the-world bluish black. An unscheduled autumn storm was sweeping through Houston. It was not linked to a hurricane or other large disturbance and so nobody was unduly concerned. Driving home in the rain, the traffic was a little bit slower than usual but it was mainly because one of the traffic control lights must have been hit and was flashing red.

Houston has a flooding problem. Hurricane or a tropical storm like Allison in 2000 and essentially flat topography, most of which is now paved over are not a good combination. But one can be intelligent about it and when looking for a house try to avoid flood plains and other obvious low lying spots. In Houston, as in many other places, large roads tend to follow old road trajectories and old roads tended to be chosen on high ground. Our house lies very close to the FM 1960 road which in fact forms the drainage divide between the Cypress Creek to the north and Greens Bayou to the south. So from a large scale perspective we could not have chosen a better spot.

A problem sometimes occurs at the intersection of a large and smaller road, because the larger road is built up higher, sometimes creating a barrier and causing water ponding on the street joining it. Keeping this in mind and not really knowing my neighborhood well enough to know how much water to expect, I did not want to turn off directly, because I would have no way of backing up into a large road with its heavy traffic if the water were too deep. So I pulled over into a bank parking lot and decided to wait. After 15 minutes I got tired of waiting. The street I needed to turn into was flooded (the problem is you can never see how deep the water is) but it did not look like the deepest spot and so I decided to try it. Bad idea. The nose of the car dipped into the water much deeper than I expected and so I quickly backed up and instead decided to go for a cup of coffee. Two hours later, the rain stopped, streets cleared and I was able to return home without problems. Except that we did not have any electricity until the next morning. Luckily we have enough candles around the house. Unfortunately all of them are scented. One scented candle is tolerable. Five are pretty awful.

(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) Next day I took a walk around the subdivision. The high water carries leaves, pine needles and various debris and the strand line it forms on the lawns makes it easy to see how high the water was in various places. To my surprise I learned very quickly that the subdivision is prone to flooding because the water came very close to flooding a couple of houses and it did not really rain that long. I also discovered that under similar conditions it is impossible to drive through – fortunately this was not based on direct experience.

You often hear about the American melting pot and things are certainly melting in Texas. No need for federally funded multicultural study – trip to a local bakery is enough. Doughnuts, tacos, biscuits, kolaches and croissants – American, Mexican, British, Czech and French. Cannot get much more international than that – except I forgot to mention that the bakery is Chinese owned.