Never Ending Rain

This last week was the anniversary of Hurricane Harvey. From August 25 to August 29 parts of Southeast Texas received up to sixty inches of rain. For comparison, the city of Houston averages forty-eight inches per year; Yes, more than a year’s worth of rain dumped in five days. Here’s my story…

If there any upside to hurricanes, it’s that you know they’re coming. We watched the forecast for days to a week in advance about the coming storm. At first, Harvey (if you are from the Gulf Coast or Florida, you are on a first-name basis with tropical storms) did not appear to be that big of a deal, but then things changed when they mentioned they expected Harvey to stall over Southeast Texas and dump rain on us. Everyone’s mind flashed back to Tropical Storm Allison, which dumped up to twenty-one inches over parts of Houston. To this day, Allison is the only non-hurricane named storm to have it’s named retired (the NWS “retires” names after a bad storm.) All I remember about Tropical Storm Allison was being at Water World before it blew in that evening, it got cloudy so we headed home, and it was raining by the time it got there. The rain persisted for several days. My street flooded, my grandparents got on the news wading into their neighborhood (which to this day has vacant lots because the government has banned them from being built because of how low they are), and I learned floods are fun when you are eight years old… the world is a giant swimming pool.

By Friday night, preparations are complete and everyone has either evacuated or bunkered down. I was home with my mom, my dad was out on a golf trip. Harvey made landfall near Rockport, Texas, roughly 150 miles Southwest of Houston. It rain on Friday night, enough to flood the street, but by the time we wake up Saturday morning, we’re in between rain bands and there’s a bit of a break, my mother and I go out to get more perishable food since they’re saying we won’t lose power and it’ll be a rain threat.
Saturday around ten the rain started, and doesn’t stop. I could end the story at this point because it never stops raining, and your mind is thinking about how this is likely how Noah’s friends felt. Now, Houston is essentially a flat, paved over swamp that’s drainage system depends on bayous, also known as slow-moving creeks or streams. When you grow up on this geography, you don’t get snow days, you have flood days. So, all there is to do is play video games, watch TV, and the floodwaters rise. That’s what we do. Due to the rain from the night before, by noon the street is flooded and by one or two it’s impassable…we’re officially stuck.

Around this time, our alarm system and phones go off regarding a tornado warning, and it doesn’t stop. My mom wakes up from a nap and I go downstairs to talk to her about the tornado warning, and we hear the outside getting loud again. Thinking the rain is picking back up, I go over to the study window and glance outside, and see no rain but hear a high-pitched whistling sound. I run back into the living room and say “Mom, that’s not wind.” Both of us glanced into our backyard, where a bush is blowing sideways, and we both realized the same thing: a tornado. We duck into our little under-the-stairs closet where we store our suitcases and outside gets loud. It sounds like a soft roar, combined with things hitting the house, and the cars complaining about being rocked. My body went limp and my heart was pounding in my chest, my mom thought I passed out. At that moment, we did not know what would be waiting us after it passed.
Things quieted, and we exited the safety of the closet. The inside of the house appeared untouched; then we went outside. There are balls everywhere. Literally, like the balls out of a fast food play place are everywhere on our street and in the floodwater. Limbs everywhere, one of our big branches is in our neighbor’s yard. The balls came from our neighbor, from two houses over, out of their trampoline, which was now on our garage’s roof. Said neighbor witnessed the loss of their trampoline and described it as “it was like the Lord picked it up and carried it off.” Minus the trampoline, limbs, and another neighbor losing a broken window, no injuries or major damage.

I texted everyone I knew and told them about what happened, and the pictures of the trampoline, my adrenaline still running wild. When I sat down on my couch, processing the event, I realized, “yup this is the last hurricane I ever want to be in”, so I moved to tornado alley that winter. After everything calmed down, the rain picked back up again.
The only thing to do at that point was sit, and watch, hoping the floods stayed out of yours and your loved ones’ houses. Evacuations were starting for those who lived close to the many creeks and bayous throughout the city. No one could do anything at this point except wait it out, and hope you didn’t need rescue like the ones on TV. I remember going to bed Saturday night, the floods halfway up our driveway, higher than any previous flood, not knowing if I’d wake up and step into water in the morning.

By Sunday morning, the flood did not progress much further up the driveway. My dad and his friend drove back, my dad got as close as the neighborhood next to ours, and then had to carry his things through the flood. My aunt and uncle did not get lucky. They live much closer to the bay and lost everything, cars, their house and my uncle was forced to the roof. We couldn’t do anything. The news Sunday morning showed rescue after rescue after rescue as Houston had become with Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing on ground level wasn’t underwater. My priest conducted a live Morning Prayer service over Facebook, and was brought to tears multiple times as the rain pounded against his own house, like it was with my own, knowing his parishioners were under no less duress, some of them had water in their house or evacuated from it, and there was nothing he could do. We all just had to wait. My family had lived in that house for ten years, and not once ever gotten water in the house, but now it looked possible. Sunday night we moved everything valuable or electronic upstairs, and the cars as close to the house as possible. That was it, just wait, hope and pray for the best.

Tuesday afternoon, after nearly four straight days of rain, the sun finally peeked through the clouds. The newscasters, exhausted from being at the news station since Friday cheered for the sun like we were prisoners. It was over, it was finally over. The furthest the water got was the garage door and the flower bed that’s against the outside wall of the house. Looking back on it, that weekend, which it’s really hard to believe was only a long weekend, was a big weekend in my life. In the course of my life, it happened merely weeks after I decided to transition and I remember thinking “If I don’t get out of this, I’ll never know.” A combination of that fear and realizing I hate tropical storms was the catalysis of how I finally ended here in Dallas. I guess, thank you, Harvey. You almost killed me but you gave me my life.