"...for TS Allison I didn't get any water in the house..."
Wow. For living in Houston environs with 36" of rain that was VERY good. My brother lives north of Houston near the airport near a bayou(Greene?) and he got 3' of water in his apt. with Allison. Needless to say he lost most everything including his car.
That said though, I'd still reconsider staying there through a cat 4 or 5 hurricane. Even if you are high and dry there is still the 140+ mi/hr wind to contend with. That's like one huge tornado sitting over your house for several hours. Not a pretty thought.
"...(ditch, lol--"crick?")..."
Lol, indeed! Boy, did those words bring back memories. We used to live down the street from a "ditch" with creaky old wooden bridges over it. It was a huge magnet for us kids who went there to find all sorts of creepy crawlies. Fun times.
I got stuck on a freeway overpass for 4 hours.... The lady in the car next to me was about 8-9 months pregnant....I still feel sorry for her...we had to open our doors to shield her....urination. She was so embarrassed....but relieved.
The water in Allison that flooded Beechnut came just up to the back tires of my car, parked in my elevated driveway, with the nose touching my garage door (garage was too full of stuff to get the car in).
At that very moment, I started to flip out after hours and hours of straight unending pounding rain, and it stopped! And the minute it stopped, the water reached an equilibrium and within seconds, it started receding.
We had many abandoned cars in the esplanade, though. The storm had come back strong between about 2AM and 4AM and all the drunks in the bars were coming home, then got stranded in the high water just down from my house.
Being a storm nut, I was out there *observing* for my storm forum and the drunks got rowdy, then I got scared. So, I called the cops and they just laughed at me. I asked if they could at least put up a barricade to keep cars from coming onto that stretch of the street. Ha, the cop shop was on my same street several blocks down and they said they couldn't get out!