"We got hammered," Houston's emergency management coordinator Rick Flanagan told CNN [7], and as the following stunning images show, that is an understatement. "We've seen flooding before, but not nearly to this extreme," said one resident, adding "It rains and it rains and it rains, and there's really nowhere for the water to go... It's ridiculous." Perhaps even more stunningly, as Mashable's Andrew Freeman notes, [8]the floods have been a remarkable turn of events for a region that was still mired in drought as of three weeks ago. That drought, which had affected Texas since 2010, is now effectively over in most areas, as is a long-running drought in Oklahoma. Authorities are still searching for 12 members of two families who went missing over the weekend.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Monday described the flash flooding that had killed at least three people in his state as "a relentless wall of water that mowed down huge trees like they were grass."
Abbott declared states of disaster in 24 counties and flew over the area south of Austin to assess the damage caused by tornadoes, heavy rainfall, thunderstorms and flooding that forced evacuations and rooftop rescues and left thousands of residents without electrical power.
"This is the biggest flood this area of Texas has ever seen," Abbott said.
"It is absolutely massive - the relentless tsunami-type power of this wave of water," the governor said.
He described homes that were "completely wiped off the map" by the dangerous weather system that struck Texas and Oklahoma.
Widespread severe thunderstorms were forecast to continue on Monday in north-central and northeast Texas and southern Oklahoma, likely bringing destructive winds, tornadoes and hail, the National Weather Service said.
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530 AM: Here's a look at where some of the heaviest rain fell overnight for Southeast TX: #txwx [10] #houwx [11] #bcswx [12] pic.twitter.com/r6TMJuaDRu [13]
— NWSHouston (@NWSHouston) May 26, 2015 [14]
[15]
[16]
[17]
As the following images from Mashable show, they did indeed "Get hammered." [8]
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Finally this seemed to sum it all up nicely...
It's like a scene from a post apocalyptic Mad Maxx Beyond The Thunderdome. #houstonflood [18] #KHOU [19] pic.twitter.com/xT5EVL1cTz [20]
— Shern-Min Chow (@ShernMinKHOU) May 26, 2015 [21]
