Our RV Adventures

Here at the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails we’ve had very little rain today, and when we did it was mostly just a slow drizzle.

But according to some forecasts, now-Tropical Storm Harvey is supposed to move back out into the Gulf a little and then come back in over Galveston with as much as another 24†of rain.

Yikes!

They’re saying that so far Harvey has dropped between 9 and 13 Trillion Gallons of water on Texas.

Yikes again!

All of our kids are still high and dry so far. Certainly hope it stays that way.

Here’s a good link that shows Houston Traffic Road Closures and Speeds in real-time. Check it out.

Houston Traffic Overlay

The last two nights the temps have been dropping down into the high 60’s, and I don’t think the rig AC’s ever even turned on today. Nice.

One thing that the storm did was give me a chance to get back working on the remote control modules that I got about a month ago.

Wireless 4 Channel Remote Control Unit

At less than $15 each, these units looked to be an inexpensive solution to a couple of problems I would like to take care of.

These have four separate independent channels capable to handling 20A from 12VDC to 120VAC. And each channel has both normally open and normally closed contacts. Plus there is a jumper that will set the unit for either momentary or on-off switching.

Although I bought two, one for the slide and one to play with, I decided to actually use the 2nd one too. When we’re traveling with the generator on and both AC’s running, occasionally the generator will shut off, or sometimes, keeps running but the 120VAC output goes offline. And when this happens, the 120VAC output will not come back online if both AC’s are turned on.

So Jan has to get up and turn off one AC for about 15 seconds until the power comes back up. Then she can turn it back on and everything is fine. Now this doesn’t make a lot of sense, because when the AC’s lose power, the thermostats go into a two minute timeout to protect the compressor before they will allow the AC’s to come back on. So nothing should be putting a load on the generator at that point.

So before I tackle the slide remote control, I decided to set up a remote control on the rear AC. And it turned out to be very simple.

After putting 12VDC on the unit I pressed the Learn button on the circuit and then pressed the ‘A’ button on the remote. This synced the remote to that particular board and Load 1.

Then it was just a matter of wiring it all in and mounting it on the wall.

I picked up the 12VDC for the unit from the Floor Light switch on the wall, and then fed the control wires behind the wall up to the thermostat where I wired it into the system. Then a little double-stick tape mounted it in place.

Now before we travel I just turn the AC off at the thermostat and then use the remote to turn it off and then back on when needed.

And the blue glow makes a nice night light.

gsdfgsf

Well, after yesterday’s lack of rain here in Conroe, about 1am this morning that all changed.

Like you’d flicked a switch it started pouring down, heavier than any time in the last couple of days. And it continued the rest of the night and into the daylight. If it’s not pouring down hard, it’s still a steady heavy drizzle, and it really hasn’t stopped.

All of the news anchors keep comparing this storm and the resultant flooding to Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. But it seems like everyone has forgotten about Tropical Storm Claudette in July 1979.

Never a hurricane, Claudette came into the Gulf after crossing over Cuba. Then proceeding across the Gulf Of America, it came on land near Houston and stalled. For the next couple of days rain just poured down without stopping.

On July 25th It dumped 42†of rain on Alvin, TX, southwest of Houston, a record for 24 hour rainfall in the US that still stands to this day. Many other cities south of Houston had totals over 30â€.

Here’s a traffic cam photo at i-610 just south of I-10 east of Houston

Those traffic signs are normally 20 feet above the road, which shows how deep it is over the roadway.

About noon I decided to drive around the park to see how it was faring around here. I was curious about the low area along the small creek, (or ‘crick’ as we say in Alabama) as you come down the hill from the Ranger Station.

But except for the orange cones, which several trucks drove right past, everything looked good.

Lake Conroe was definitely over its banks.

I thought that might be an RV in the flood waters, but it turned out to be a pontoon boat with too tight an anchor rope. Hope it doesn’t get pulled under as the water rises.

I heard later in the afternoon that the COE was going to start releasing water from the lake to lower the level.

This Great White Egret seems to be the only guy that’s happy about all the rain

When I got back to the rig I checked my  homemade rain gauge. I set this kitty litter bucket out just after midnight Saturday morning and I don’t know when it overflowed, but the bucket is 16†tall so there’s been at least that much rain here since then.

I dumped it out about 2pm, so we’ll see how much more we get.

Last minute update before I postd the blog at 11pm. We’ve had another 5 inches of rain in the last 9 hours.

A little before 3pm we got a text message from the Lake Conroe TT saying that there was a break in the 8†water main feeding the park and that the water would be off until further notice. Glad I topped off our fresh water tank the other day.

Just now, about 7:30, we got another text message saying the water line break had been repaired. Yay!

There have been dueling recommendations between state and local authorities about whether or not to call for a mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas of Houston. Especially since the last evacuation of Houston was an unmitigated disaster all by itself.

In late August 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the New Orleans area. With around 1800 fatalities attributed to the storm, it was a real shock to the Gulf Coast. So when just a month later, Hurricane Rita initially made a beeline for Houston, mass panic ensued.

Originally forecast as a CAT 5, the strongest Gulf storm on record, Rita scared the crap out of a lot of people. And about 2.5 million of them headed north out of Houston on I-45, all at the same time, creating the largest gridlock in US history.

More than100 people died in the evacuation. Drivers were stuck in traffic for more than 20 hours, and heat stroke struck down dozens. A bus carrying nursing home patients caught fire, and 24 died. People ran out of gas just sitting in the gridlock and fights broke out along the roadway. It was described as ‘a hellhole.’

And then, still out in the Gulf, Rita downgraded itself to a CAT 3 and made a 90 degree turn to the right, missing Houston almost completely, ultimately coming on land around the Texas/Louisiana border. Down in the Clear Lake area, we got no rain whatsoever, leading to this famous photo.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Thought for the Day:

asdfasdf