Despite the fact that Southeast Texas is suffering a drought that could be the worst in living memory, some people actually are thinking about floods and realizing with hurricane season upon us this is the time to purchase Texas flood insurance.
Doug Canant, Drainage District 6 chief engineer, said work continues on detention ponds in and around the city of Beaumont to be better prepared for whatever might fall from the sky when it does decide to come.
Ten years ago, before a lot of the projects that Beaumonters now take for granted were completed, Tropical Storm Allison parked itself over north Jefferson County and began to engulf the Beaumont and the China-Nome areas as if they were inside a washing machine's rinse cycle.
The early morning deluge on June 7, 2001, qualified as a 100-year storm, which is measured as 13 inches falling within 24 hours. It means a storm of that magnitude has a one-in-100 chance of happening in any one year, not once in 100 years.
Storm intensity varies, sometimes delivering rainfall amounts in just a couple of hours that can overwhelm any drainage preparations.
Drainage District 6 had built a series of detention ponds in the mid-1990s around the Folsom Drive-Dowlen Road area, which were first put to the test with Allison.
