FARGO — Red River Valley residents are familiar with flooding. However, the flood capital of America might be a little further south. Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city, is located on a board-flat coastal plain at an elevation of 43 feet above sea level within a few miles of the Gulf of Mexico. It is a city with a tarmac and urban sprawl problem far worse than anything around here. When it rains heavily, the rain has nowhere to go.
Houston’s Harris County averages four to five flood warnings per year and has had homes flooded 27 times since the mid-1970s. Average annual rainfall in Houston is around 50 inches, which is more than twice the average of our region. In addition, the Texas coast is frequently inundated by torrential rain from hurricanes and tropical storms. Alvin, Texas, near Houston, set the national rainfall record in 1979 when Tropical Storm Claudette produced 43 inches of rain in 24 hours.
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