Wondering what a sudden, extreme rain event like the Tax Day Storm of 2016 could do to Houston communities? Use our interactive tool to visualize flood depths and counts of flooded residential lots in local Harris County watersheds. In the upper left corner, select your watershed of interest. Then move the Depth Filter to a given level of flooding above ground level. The Historic scenario reveals impacts of the storm if it hit where it did in 2016, centered over rural Waller County. The Transported scenario reveals impacts as they would occur, if the same storm centered over the selected watershed, instead of over rural Waller County. And the “Difference” scenario provides data on the differences between the two scenarios, that is, between what would happen if the storm centered over rural Waller County versus directly over the selected watershed.
In all instances a key point is that as a flash event, the storm could hit quickly, overnight without warning. For a fuller account and related recommendations, please see our piece in The Conversation.
Credit: Data produced by Rice University’s SSPEED Center; visualization produced by Rice University’s Spatial Studies Lab at the Center for Research Computing.