With areas just to the north of Houston experiencing yet another round of extremely heavy rain for the second time this week, rivers and creeks in those areas are going to continue to rise.
Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for people living near the East Fork of the San Jacinto River. The rainfall areas just received Thursday morning will cause the river to swell once again.
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Lake Conroe and Lake Livingston are both releasing large amounts of water, so the West Fork of the San Jacinto River as well as the Trinity River, which is already experiencing major flooding, will continue to see that flooding.
Here are the latest conditions and projections of water levels in several major areas of southeast Texas.
East Fork of the San Jacinto River
The East Fork of the San Jacinto River has already swelled to major flood stage due to heavy rains, which occurred north of Houston Monday morning. The river began to drop back into moderate flood stage, but this latest round of rainfall has caused the river to begin to swell once again. The current projections are that the river will once again enter major flood stage and swell even higher than it did at the beginning of the week. By Saturday, the river is expected to crest at 78 feet. This is eight feet higher than it crested early Wednesday morning and a few feet shy of the 81.2-foot record.
Mandatory evacuations have just been ordered in Harris County for people living along the river from FM 1485 all the way down to Lake Houston. Officials are asking everyone in these areas to leave as soon as possible and be out of the area by nightfall.
West Fork of the San Jacinto River
Along with the East Fork, we are also going to start having problems along the West Fork of the San Jacinto River. This is a graph showing the water level and projected water levels of the West Fork near US 59 at Humble. The heavy rains we saw Thursday morning have already started spiking the water levels into moderate flood stage and along with water releases from the dam at Lake Conroe, will continue to rise over the coming days.
Right now, the water level at this location is hovering just below major flood stage. I expect this to enter major flood stage by the end of the day or into tomorrow with an expected crest at 61.1 feet by Saturday afternoon. Any residents along the river—especially in the Kingwood area—need to be aware of rising water levels along the West Fork of the river.
This link has a map of areas near Lake Houston that are projected to be affected by flood waters.
Trinity River
For the Trinity River, I have pulled two locations to look at. The first is at Goodrich in Polk County. This is just downstream from the Lake Livingston dam.
The dam is currently releasing a very large volume of water. It is already at major flood stage at 44.32 feet. With the additional releases at the lake, this will only continue to go up and is currently expected to crest early Friday at 49 feet. Projections are that this area of the river will continue to stay in major flood stage into next week. That water coming out of Lake Livingston will continue to move downstream.
The next graph shows projected water levels for the river at Liberty. This area is also in major flood stage and will continue to rise before cresting at a projected 32 feet on Sunday or Monday. This is just shy of a record water level for this portion of the river, which was 32.7 feet. Areas of interest along the Trinity River need to be monitoring the water level and make plans accordingly.