CA_CanonUser Loc: Friendswood, TX

I live in a small city just south of Houston, Friendswood. We got 51 inches of rain over the 5 days which flooded over 1/3 of the homes in our city. The water was within a foot of entering my home. We live near the convergence of three creeks, each of which was way-way out of its banks. The weather forecasts prior to the arrival of the storm was 15 to 25 inches of rain; some isolated areas may get as much as 35 inches and possibly 40 inches. Nobody was predicting anything close to 51 inches over the entire Houston-Galveston metro area. The creek closest to us, Clear Creek, crested at 24.03 feet; the highest prior to this was 18.8 feet and that was during a major hurricane in 1989. So, we have been through several hurricanes and tropical storms since I first moved here in 1967, but nothing close to the amount of rain we saw this time. The annual average rainfall in Houston is approximately 52 inches, so we got a year's total over a 5 day period.