Does anyone have an Ark?

By all estimates, yesterday was supposed to be the end of the world in Houston... but it just turned out to be a normal day.  So boring.  ;)

On Tuesday, there was apparently a storm brewing out in west/southwest Texas that the weather people were predicting would hit Houston in the next 24 hours.

I don't know why weather people get so overly-excited and melodramatic when they know that a big storm is coming.  I guess it must be because there's so much uncertainty in what they usually know that they're ecstatic when they find something they can actually predict.

Anyway, they were predicting floods of biblical proportions.  We got an e-mail here at work on Tuesday afternoon warning us that if our office site is prone to flooding that we were to "please pay particular attention to the road conditions in the areas you intend to travel and avoid streets that are flooded."

So yesterday morning when I woke up and it wasn't even raining, I was a little disappointed.

After checking the Weather Channel, though, I saw that the storm had just passed through San Antonio and that it would make it to Houston later in the morning.  That was good news - I would have time to get to work before having to deal with idiot Houston drivers.

All morning, I kept looking outside, waiting for the carnage to begin.

At around 10:30 or so, the dark clouds made their way to our area.  And it began to rain.  But it was just normal rain - not the torrential downpour it was supposed to be.  I must admit that I was disappointed.

It continued to rain for a couple of hours and by about 1:00, it was done in the area around my office.  But at about that time, we got an e-mail and a voice message from the school system saying that they were cancelling all after-school activities for the day.

Puh-lease!  Since when did the people of Houston get so scared of a little thunderstorm?  Oh, right.  I guess there IS a history of this happening...

But seriously, it was nothing like the sudden rain that took the city by surprise a couple of weeks ago.  This is what our street looked like on January 9.

Row, row, row your boat...

Gently down the street...

The husband was at home during the storm and he kept sending me picture updates of the street.  It was a good thing he didn't have to go anywhere!

Luckily, the rain only lasted a couple of hours and the flooding in the street was gone about 30 minutes later.  He was able to make it to his afternoon meeting without any problems, but when he opened the garage door, he was met by a pile of leaves that the waves had washed up to our garage door!

Leaf dam

Now THAT'S what I call flooding.