Homes surrounded by water in parts of Houston as storms moved across region

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- An Acres Homes man said his street saw its worst flooding since Hurricane Beryl on Monday.

Mansfield and several surrounding streets were barely passable when Eyewitness News visited around 5 p.m.

Ariel Maldonado spoke to us from his driveway, one of the few dry spots in sight.

"The ditches were full, so it was basically just rising and rising, and I was at work just constantly watching the cameras," Maldonado said.

During his five years living there, Maldonado said the last time he saw his street flood as badly as it did Monday was in 2024 during Hurricane Beryl.

"The new constructions that's happening, the culverts, it looks like it's their main drainage line just coming into our main ditches," he said.

While it's difficult to say if new development played a role in the flooding on his street, experts told ABC13 a flooded street isn't necessarily an infrastructure problem.

"Generally speaking, most of our streets can handle about two inches of rain an hour," said Jeff Lindner, meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District. "Today, we were getting rainfall rates of an inch of rain in 15 minutes. That's greatly exceeding the design of that pipe under the ground to carry that water."

The city said it was preparing for more flooding on Tuesday by staging high-water rescue vehicles around the city and preemptively blocking off roads that are known to flood.

Officials said they've also lowered water levels in Lake Houston.

White Oak Bayou rose about 20 feet in four hours on Monday, according to National Weather Service data.

You can monitor waterways in Harris County in real time with the Harris County Flood Warning System.