The Houston northeast area mostly missed the heavy rain storms yesterday evening starting around 9:30. That didn’t stop my Garmin Edge 510 from pestering me with 7 weather alerts about flood warnings every 1/2 mile or so while riding. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to turn them off until I stopped at the Huffman Chevron for a rest stop at the 24.5 mile mark. I looked in every setting on the 510 but couldn’t find it so I Goggled it and found out it was a setting in the app on my phone. Once I turned it off I rode in peace from Huffman to home. We did get 3.15″ of rain last night but this is about half what west and southwest Houston got. During the storm the radar was bright yellow and orange as the storm moved through. I saw pictures of flooding on Twitter and it didn’t look good.

I was getting ready to ride this morning when our electricity went off about 10:40. I had an errand to run west of home about a mile and the electricity was on there. I wasn’t sure what caused it since the weather not quite so severe here. I was going back and forth on which route to ride: go north or go east. I decided on “Huffman – Liberty County Line” route after my wife reminded me of the low areas to the north. After waiting for the electricity to come on I gave up and left at 11:46. The wind was kicking up which probably caused the electricity outage. As i was riding through the residential streets to exit Kingwood I was on the greenbelt trail along Kingwood Drive east of Kingwood High School. Ahead I saw the utility crews blocking the right hand lane and as I got closer there was new pole with new hardware laying on the ground. A big boom truck looked like it was getting positioned to set this new pole. Just before I got to this spot I noticed there were no cars in the high school parking lot. Electricity must’ve been out there too because school has several more days. I rode under the boom truck past the pole to continue the ride.

Every body of water I crossed or went beside was higher than it was yesterday. This was triggering all of the notifications on the 510 making it difficult to concentrate on biking.

Crossing Lake Houston on FM1960 the wind was stiff. I could see the higher water. There is section of ground about half way across with trees and bushes when the water is normal. Only the tops of the trees barely showed above the water. The boat pier at the Cedar Landing Restaurant on the east shore had waves breaking over what wasn’t already submerged. Water was not that far below the edge of the restaurant building.

No water issues on the route itself. The road was clear and dry. East of Huffman on FM1960 the ditches were full and running in places. If the water were higher by a foot or two it would be to the shoulder of FM1960. When I left home I thought of riding on Huffman – Eastgate back to Huffman when I reached the Liberty County line but I changed my mind when I remembered it was low and prone to flooding.

The wind and constant notifications made it difficult to ride above 17 to 18 mph and my average speed showed it. Checking the weather at the end I saw the wind was from the SSE at 15 mph with 22 mph gusts. That explains fighting the bike as I rode west over Lake Houston. Whenever a gust came the deep section rims wanted to move the bike to the right. It was a relief to leave FM1960 and go north towards home.

[iframe https://connect.garmin.com/activity/embed/785800826 465px 500px] [iframe https://www.strava.com/activities/312409405/embed/9294e9154af5f80022b7f6ffc160ccd751590bce 590px 500px]