by the next four days, to hit this place. just to give you a little sense where we are, in southwest houston, this is what, maybe, six to eight inches, it s receded. what causes flash flooding were the constant rain bands pounding this areament we re just about 100 yards from what s known as kegan s bayou. we ve been here where cars are. i ll give you a lay of the land. this main thoroughfare, you can see the road closures on this end of the several block of businesses and then if you pan back with me, this way, you ll see the road closed, a few blocks up that way, a major highway, it s southwest freeway, and they blocked it off. we saw several cars get stuck. one being towed out of here. and the reason why this is significant is we compare it back to the 2001 tropical storm alison. now, people have talked a lot about harvey being down gra i hadd
just to the west of port laf carks towards victoria, texas move in towards tomorrow and in to monday, the storm is right in the exact same spot. that means continued rainfall all across this area. the flooding is going to be extreme and for people who are thinking we have maybe dodged a bullet places like galveston, you were never going to be the worst of it that doesn t mean the rain is not going to be with you. you will still see very heavy amounts of rain there the next several days. clayton: we will get to griff jenkins who is in houston, texas. abby: he said an inch of rain. clayton: an inch of rain is all it would take to get that city to flood. worried about significant flooding there. tell us about houston. rick: absolutely. houston likely getting over a foot of rain. get west of houston we will see those totals go over 20-inch amount. houston is notorious for flooding. numerous floods over the last couple of years. griff was talking about tropical storm alison in 2001 that dum
about 26 inches or so. but those numbers have been going up in the forecast. to get a sense of what that means for the city of houston, you ve got to go back a ways. in 2001 in was a tropical storm alison that came in and took the city by surprise, dumped more than 2 feet of rain and cost the city $5 billion, 22 people died in that storm, the majority of those people dying because of drowning. we spoke with the texas a and m professor that said that the city of houston has learned some lessons from that event, and that includes some of the warning signs that they have been place, look around the streets here in houston there are places where there are sciensigns that light up if there s a flood risk. you have infrastructure here, the helicopters for rescues, the deep water vehicles that are used for rescues, all of that is in place. but what they can t escape is the fact this is a low lying
to the 2001 event and tropical storm alison, alison stayed over the city of houston five days and dropped over 30 inches of rain and was a billion dollar event back in 2001. yeah, i remember that as well. could this hurricane, hurricane harvey, make land fall twice? yeah, you know, right now this forecast is so uncertain. any time i see a very slow forward movement and where the models, what we call do a spaghetti model plot where they re all over the place, they re not in agreement with each other, right now anything is possible, in my opinion, and we have to watch each forecast as it comes out very closely because those models are going to change and the guidance that the national weather service and the national hurricane center uses is going to change. it s a dynamic situation that we, you know, we can never be too cautious and everybody needs to stay alert. fema has deployed what are called urban search and rescue
what are they facing today? things haven t been this bad since about 14 years ago. tropical storm alison. the fourth most populated city in the country paralyzed. search efforts will continue this morning for a missing elderly couple in their 80 s. they were swept away during the height of the storm. houston hit with 11 inches of rain in the span of six hours. the mayor estimating 4,000 homes with significant damage. 2,500 cars abandoned the vast majority by drivers who encountered the waters and got stuck in the freeway. things slowly returning to normal. most of the water is back in their banks. the schools are back open. power outages were at 90,000 at one point. that s down to 8,000. to give you an idea of the improvement. you see where the water is, you see the overpass there, that s how high the water was. some of the branches and trees