This was only a tropical storm, yet it dumped enough rain to flood our neighborhood. Our garage had several inches of water in it, and the water level came within a half-inch of getting into the house. Everyone to the west of us had some water in their house -- the closer to the drainage ditch you got, the more water you had in your house. We had put some of our belongings on tables and on plywood panels put on sawhorses as a precaution, actions that proved to be unnecessary in our case. We had a guest overnight, a woman who was driving home but could proceed no farther.
This is the FM 518 exit from the southbound Gulf Freeway. Clear Creek has overflowed its banks, completely covering up the freeway.
This was a huge storm, and when it entered the Gulf of Mexico, hurricane warnings went up. We were being advised to evacuate, and that's what we did. We loaded up the car with essentials and with our pets, and we left around 5 o'clock at night. We had no idea where we would end up that evening.
(more to come later)
Here is my story of how our family made it through hurricane Alicia in 1983, as published in the Galveston County Daily News August 17, 2003.
Experiencing Hurricane Alicia in August 1983 was something I'll never forget - and something I hope never to experience again.
We didn't have much time to get ready for the storm, only a day or so. We evacuated during Allen in 1980 but chose to stay this time.
On Wednesday night, we moved our couch into the living room and hunkered down.
The lights went out fairly soon, so our companion for that night was Anita Martini on KPRC radio. The roar of the wind and rain never let up; the eye never passed over our part of League City, though I think the eastern edge went a couple of miles to our west.
At one point, I had to go to the bathroom to throw up. I braved a peek outside; the rain was going sideways, and a small tree had been blown completely over.
In the morning, we could see the mess in our yard, with many downed limbs and a few blown-out sections of our fence. But our back fence held, though it might not have had an aluminum panel from the nearby Boat Barn gone a few feet farther and hit it. Many of our trees had seriously bent trunks. Those bends persist to this day.
We didn't have lights for a whole week. For a few days, we had strung an extension cord from our neighbor's house and used it to power a fan. We all slept in our family room in front of that fan until the lights returned.
©2003-4 R. W. Reini