The storm that had barely earned a name — it was briefly considered a tropical storm before being downgraded to a tropical depression — took many residents by surprise with its relentless rain, rekindling memories from when Hurricane Harvey dropped more than 50 inches of precipitation in some areas and caused dozens of deaths in 2017.
As the floodwaters rose and receded Friday, a fuller picture of the devastation began to emerge. At least three people had died, including a man who drowned while trying to move his horse. The two others had been driving when their cars got caught in flooding. The authorities were also investigating after a man last seen walking around during the storm was found dead in a ditch in Houston.
Across southeastern Texas, highways were shut down, routines were disrupted and people were struggling to get to work. Some, like Charlotte Kinsey, were sick with worry over missing family members.
Kinsey fled her trailer home in Winnie, Texas, on Thursday afternoon as the floodwaters rose around her and her 3-week-old daughter, Niomi Grace Galley. But she had not heard from her 17-year-old son, Trevor Coffey, who had not been seen since he returned from a job interview late Wednesday. Trevor has a mental health diagnosis that requires medication, she said.
Rod Carroll, the chief of police in Vidor, Texas, outside Beaumont, was still orchestrating water rescues Friday from the police station where he had been posted for nearly 36 hours.
Since Thursday, his employees had helped rescue dozens of people in the city of 10,000, and he estimated that a few hundred homes in the area had been flooded. His was one of them.
Much of southeast Texas absorbed 9 or more inches of rain from Tuesday morning to Thursday night. Areas southwest of Beaumont were hit hardest, with an extraordinary 43 inches near Fannett, Texas. That made Imelda the seventh-wettest tropical cyclone on record in the United States.
In a given year, southeast Texas typically sees about 63 inches of rainfall.
This article originally appeared in
.