Tropical Storm Allison
June 2001

On Thursday morning around 3am, June 7th the rain starting coming down hard. No one in our house could sleep with the  thunder, booming every few minutes.  I got up and unplugged all valuable electronic equipment and tried to sleep.  At 5:30am, my neighbor, Greg Cavaleri called us to let us know that water was half way up in all of our yards.  By around 9am, Greg and another neighbor, Mike Latimer were helping each other put furniture up on blocks or chairs in our homes.

We do not live in a flood area.  No not even a 100 year flood plain.  Between 3am and 10am, we got around 12 inches of rain where bayous and drainage ditches near by  were already full from light rain over the two previous days.  It is my understanding that a lot of Hurricanes don't drop 12 inches of rain over a few days.  

At some where around 10am the water was literally a few inches from coming into all of our houses while the rain was continuing to come down hard.  I looked up and clouds were not even moving and the sky was dark.  I finally came to the place in mind that it was inevitable, so I just prayed that it would stop.  I went inside to see if I left anything else left to do and came back outside to find the rain had stopped and the clouds were suddenly moving!  The water never got into our house!  We missed getting the water by around 2 inches.  

The pictures below are from the hour or so after the rain stopped: