Tropical Storm Edouard Dumped Up to 25 Inches on Southeast Texas. Here's What Houston Should Take From It.
Tropical Storm Edouard Dumped Up to 25 Inches on Southeast Texas. Here's What Houston Should Take From It.
Tropical Storm Edouard came ashore near Johnson Bayou, Louisiana, at 2:20 p.m. on Tuesday, September 1 - close enough to the state line that Southeast Texas experienced it as a Texas storm. By Wednesday morning, parts of the region had recorded 10 to 21 inches of rain, rainfall rates were hitting 5 inches an hour, and a flash flood emergency was in effect. When the rain finally shifted north on Thursday, some spots east of Houston had close to 25 inches and more than 30,000 people were without power. Houston, forecast for 3 to 6 inches, caught the western edge of it. Two weeks on, here is what the storm did, what it proved, and what to do before the next one.
(Header image: GOES-19 GeoColor view of Edouard about an hour before landfall, September 1. NOAA/CIRA, public domain.)
What Edouard Did, by the Numbers
Edouard went from tropical depression to named storm Monday night and was on the coast by Tuesday afternoon - fast even by Gulf standards. It was never a wind story. It was a rain story, and the rain parked east of the metro:
| What | The number | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Landfall | Near Johnson Bayou, LA, 2:20 p.m. CDT Sept. 1; 60 mph winds | NOAA / NESDIS |
| Rain by Wednesday morning | 10 to 21 inches recorded in parts of Southeast Texas | ABC News, Sept. 2 |
| Estimated storm totals | 15 to 22 inches in spots; some areas tracking 25 to 30 | Washington Post, Sept. 2 |
| Where it ended up | Nearly 25 inches in parts of Southeast Texas | FOX 26 Houston, Sept. 3 |
| Rainfall rate | Up to 5 inches per hour; flash flood emergency issued | ABC News, Sept. 2 |
| Power | 30,000+ outages Thursday, mostly Beaumont and Port Arthur | FOX 26 / PowerOutage.com |
| Houston's forecast | 3 to 6 inches; up to 9 on the upper coast | Associated Press, Sept. 1 |
Houston Got the Edge of It, Not the Middle
The bullseye sat over Liberty, Chambers and Jefferson counties. Liberty County took some of the worst of it - around Tarkington, leaders were warning people to stay clear of floodwaters while roads went under. Beaumont and Port Arthur carried most of the power outages. By Thursday the flood risk had shifted north with the remnants, into a band from Palestine and Crockett down toward a Level 2 zone stretching from Dallas to near Houston. Harris County stayed on the wet side of the storm instead of inside it.
State officials had braced for exactly this. “This is our first big storm of the season, and I'll tell you, Texas is prepared,” Orlando Alanis of the Texas Division of Emergency Management said as Edouard came in, with Governor Abbott naming flooding as the top concern.
That is what a warning shot looks like. Nine years ago, a storm that was not much stronger on paper parked over this same coastline and put more than 60 inches on parts of the metro. We wrote about what Harvey taught Houston about its maps - the short version is that the difference between a tropical storm and a catastrophe is where the rain shield decides to stop. This time it stopped 60 miles east. Next time is a coin flip.
What a Storm Like This Says About the Maps
Look at where the worst flooding landed: low, flat, bayou-cut country east of the metro, the kind of place where water has nowhere to go and a five-inch-per-hour rain band turns roads into rivers in an afternoon. These are also the places flood maps have historically undercounted.
Houston is not exempt from that problem. FEMA's draft redraw - the first since 2007 - would grow Harris County's 100-year floodplain by roughly 43 percent, adding about 115,000 housing units. We track where that update stands here. The short version: the official maps are still catching up to the storms the region already gets.
And when the rain parks over Houston itself instead of its neighbors, the conversation turns to the upstream reservoirs - the fight the federal government finally dropped this month. Here is what the Addicks-Barker ruling means for the homeowners inside those pools.
What to Do Before the Next One
Check your address. Two minutes, free, no signup. Know your zone and your real risk before you need it - not while you are watching a radar loop.
- Do not read “Zone X” as “no risk.” Zone X means outside the 100-year line. It does not mean outside a 25-inch rain band. Flood insurance outside the high-risk zones is the cheap kind, and this is the season to price it.
- Keep an eye on the Gulf into October. The climatological peak of hurricane season was September 10, and the back half of the season is when Texas takes its biggest hits - Harvey arrived in late August, and Imelda put more than 40 inches on Southeast Texas in mid-September 2019.
- If water got close this time, document it. Photos, dates, high-water marks. Your risk picture and your insurance options both change after a near miss, and the paper trail matters.
Edouard will not be the last Gulf storm to park near this coast. The difference between a bad week and a life-changing loss is usually decided before the first band comes ashore. Check your address.