Storms in Houston Thursday evening?

[leehljp]

You guys OK in Houston area? Just saw the storm damage that moved through!

[LCHIEN]

Yeah, wow.

I was attending a seminar on the 21st floor of a 32 story Greenway Plaza office building a few miles west of downtown Houston.
The speaker was talking and about 6:15 PM everyone phones started beeping (initially a whole bunch simultaneously and then a few stragglers for the next few minutes) the alert messages that a tornado watch was in effect in the immediate area. The speaker paused because of all the racket but decided to go on
About 10 minutes later there was another round of alert messages to everyones phones stating that a sever thunder storm was in the area with 80 MPH winds and to shelter in a strong building.
This building was pretty large 245 x 90 feet on google maps.
Shortly after that warning we all felt the building swaying considerably in the wind. The speaker said, "wooo, did you feel that?" I've not been in a large earthquake before but I can imagine that's what it felt like.
We could see and hear torrential rain outside. All the power window shades dropped down and they announced stay away from the windows. The lights were alternately blinking and the room PA system went haywire. The security cameras were flashing lights and swiveling around the room.
After the talk was over a short time later the building PA came on and said this is building security and announced which local streets were flooded.
So we waited another 30-40 minutes, ate the left over hors d'oeuvres at which time it was about 7:30 and all the traffic and water had receded and went home easily.
As we went to the ground floor the elevator bank was in the dead middle of the building, there were many leaves from the trees outside the building blown up and down the 240 foot length of the lobby from the doors at one end that people had apparently opened during the storm. There are a lot of tree leaves and branches and a few trees that were down on the way home.
But we were safe. A lot of local power outages were experienced. It was intense but short so typically of Houston in such short torrential downpours there are always local street flooding but it goes away pretty fast.
Its the stalled out torrential rainfalls that last for two days that cause massive flooding from rising creeks bayous and rivers and impoundments to flood large areas.

[leehljp]

Good to hear you are OK!
dbhost OK?
Others?

[LCHIEN]

Went to some stores this morning to get stuff. at 11 AM (storm plus 17 hours) my CVS was closed - no power, and the 99 Market asian grocery store was shuttered - no power. Storm + 18 hours later my daughter's house was still without power but finally got cell phone and texts restored.

[dbhost]

Sorry, just saw this post. Yeah I am fine, never lost power for more than one minute. (It flickered but that is all). I am in Galveston County just south of the Johnson Space Center, most of the real damage is north of I-10, I have been wondering how Loring is holding up though, not sure his part of town got clobbered but I saw the satelite stuff and it was ugly there for a while...

[LCHIEN]

As of around 9 PM Sunday evening, 75 hours after the storms passed through, The local grid operator said that about half the outages were cleared but approx 250,000 people were still without power and that it would take until about Wednesday to clear the backlog.

When a hurricane is headed for the Gulf Coast, the five states on the coast prepare the emergency electric crews and mobilize them to the state that gets hit to help whatever area is hit by the storm. This sharing of resources helps maintain a fairly quick response to a storm by sharing the crews.

I think in the case of this storm, it came up so quickly and violently that interstate crews were not mobilized so the local grid operator is pretty much working by themselves without the usual outside help they get for hurricanes,