Central Texas is often called "Flash Flood Alley" because of its frequent, intense storms. The "big ones" seem to happen every decade. The major floods of Austin described below have left a lasting impression in people's memories and in the record books.

Click here to share your Memorial Day Flood experience online.

November 15, 2001

A slow-moving storm system stalled over central Texas, west of Austin, and waves of rain and thunderstorms began to sweep up the I-35 corridor. Widespread rainfall totals typically ranged from five to eight inches, but radar based estimates indicate that some areas may have received 15 inches of rain. Much of this rain fell within the space of six hours.

There was one fatality and widespread flood damage both where the drainage capacity of streets and storm drains was exceeded by rainfall and where creeks overflowed their banks in floodplain areas. In total, 860 buildings were reported to have flood damage. Onion Creek suffered the most significant damage, but home and businesses in the floodplains of Slaughter Creek, South Boggy Creek, Williamson Creek, West Bouldin Creek, East Bouldin Creek, Shoal Creek and Walnut Creek were also hard hit. There was also some flood damage along other streams.

October 17, 1998

Twin hurricanes Madeline and Lester on the west coast of Mexico funneled continuous waves of moisture inland causing flooding in Central and South Texas. Across the state there were 31 deaths, 20 counties declared disaster areas, and 7,000 people evacuated from their homes. Property damages and losses reached almost $1 billion. In Austin, 454 homes were damaged, with most of the damages incurred to houses along along Onion Creek, Walnut Creek, and Williamson Creek.

December 20, 1991

Record peak discharges were recorded at many creek gaging stations across Central Texas. A week of heavy rains contributed to flooding in Lake Travis, Shoal, Williamson, Bull, and Walnut Creeks. An estimated 200 homes in Travis and Bastrop counties were completely under water. Needless to say, this flood ruined the holiday season for many people.

May 24, 1981

This storm event will always be remembered as the "Memorial Day Flood" which drowned 13 people and caused $36 million in damages. This short-duration storm with intense rainfall hit many of Austin's urban creeks: Shoal, Walnut, Little Walnut, Bee, and Waller creeks. Shoal Creek normally flows at 90 gallons per minute, but peaked during this flood at 6 million gallons per minute! Some areas received over 10 inches of rain in four hours. Click here to share your Memorial Day Flood experience online.

November 23, 1974

An evening cold front brought thunderstorms in a 40-mile wide line that dropped between four and ten inches of rain in Central Texas. Stalled cars were abandoned all over Austin and "every road in the county has people stranded on the rooftops," said a Travis County sheriff's office spokesman. A man and his 8-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son were swept into West Bouldin Creek after driving past an off-duty firefighter as he tried to stop traffic from crossing the area. Their car was immediately swept downstream, drowning all three and bringing the death toll up to 13.

October 28, 1960

Similar to the 1974 flood, an evening cold front brought downpours in a 75-mile radius around Austin. An Austin Statesman article described the frightening evening: "Giant, swirling walls of water, spawned by torrential rains of up to nine inches, snuffed out at least two lives, swept away property valued at $2.3 million, and forced 200 people to flee their homes before the flood in a nightmarish night of death and destruction in Austin. Early Saturday, bleary-eyed police reported they had answered an unprecedented 6,000 calls during the night." Several motorists were washed away in their cars, bringing the final death toll to 11. Police claimed the floodwaters from Boggy Creek rose to such a height and to such force that "cars were being pushed around like floating beer cans" on Rosewood Avenue.

April 24, 1957

Texans cheered when rains came in early April to end the seven-year drought. But on April 24, the Austin American Statesman said, "when the black, purple shrouded cloud first appeared in the sky, Central Texans knew something was about to happen. It did. Up to 10 inches of rain fell within a few minutes in a wide sweep of middle Texas." April 24th was labeled "The Day of the Big Cloud," and "the worst day of floods, tornadoes and torrential rain and hail Central Texas has ever seen." As if that wasn't bad enough, the rains kept coming for a total of 32 days, causing flooding all across Austin and Central Texas.

June 15, 1935

The flood of 1935 was one of three major floods to hit the area in the 1930's. Austin was hit with 22 inches of rain in three hours. Between 2,500 and 3,000 residents in East Austin (near present-day IH-35 and the river bank) were left virtually homeless after the waters receded. A Statesman article described the situation: "Sloppy silt was deposited to a depth of from six to 18 inches on the floors, over furniture, bed clothing and in fact everything that the glue-like mud could fasten itself upon, and only the most rugged articles of furniture could be salvaged."

"South Congress Avenue between Barton Springs Road and the Texas School for the Deaf was a crumpled mass of ruins, the street being littered with broken sewer lines torn from business buildings that once stood in the area, broken concrete, twisted water pipes, signs, trees, timbers, structural steel, a number of the new concrete lamp posts erected a month ago by the city and other debris. The street, the pride of Austin and of the state highway department presented a wretched scene." The Montopolis and Marble Falls bridges were also both destroyed.

September 8-10, 1921

This storm event, known as "The Great Thrall/Taylor Storm", still stands in the record books as the greatest of all continental U.S. rainstorms during 18 consecutive hours. The storm entered Mexico as a hurricane from the Gulf and then drifted northward dropping six inches on Laredo before unleashing on Central Texas. Like the storms of 1998, 1991, and 1981, this storm followed a pattern that ran along the Balcones Escarpment, then centered over Williamson and Travis Counties. At Taylor, 23.11 inches of rain fell in 24 hours. Thrall reported approximately 36 inches in 18 hours and 40 inches of rain in total. There were 224 fatalities across the seven counties that were affected.

Austin received 18.23 inches of rain in 24 hours. Miraculously, only six fatalities were reported in Travis County, all on Onion Creek. Three steel bridges washed out on Onion Creek at Moore's Crossing and Doyle's Crossing and on Walnut Creek at Dessau Road.

Although less rain fell in Bexar County, the results were more disastrous. In a paragraph titled "Less Warning Than War", the Austin American described the terrifying night there: "Only in San Antonio the flood victims had less warning than the booming of a distant cannon. The stories told by those who fled before the flood waters seem to make it clear that the Alazan Creek, usually a placid rivulet of water, became a rushing torrent in less than half an hour. The water, it is said, rose eight feet in approximately twenty minutes. So it was not long before the first of the houses near the creek bed floated from their foundations and it was a barrage of these that hurled themselves against the International & Great Northern trestle. By midnight between forty and fifty houses that a few minutes before vomited men, women and children in all stages of dress and undress, were being churned into a shapeless mass of debris where they lodged against the railroad bridge. Their tremendous weight and pressure against the trestle soon cracked that structure in the middle, which pushed itself against a second trestle that broke shortly after under the strain."

April 23, 1915

Flash floods killed 35 people, most of whom lived near Waller Creek. Many people drowned from swirling water inside their houses. Excerpts from a 1915 article in the Statesman says it all: "Whole sections of the city were submerged for hours. Houses were washed away, cows, horses, chickens and other fowls were careening down swelled Shoal and Waller Creeks to join the human corpses that had gone swirling before them to the bosom of the Colorado... This morning Austin presents a pitiable sight. There is not a section of the city traversed by the treacherous little streams docile most months of the year, which has not felt the finger of death." More 1915 flood photos.

April 7, 1900

The flood waters started from a two-day storm in the High Plains halfway between Lubbock and Amarillo. The stormwater filled the Colorado, the Brazos and the Guadalupe rivers, sending the torrent through unsuspecting cities like Austin and Bastrop. This flood will always be remembered as "The Day the Dam Broke." McDonald Dam on the Colorado River broke up, sending a wall of water down the river which killed dozens of people, even whole families. The river peaked at 60' high and a mile wide. The pride of Austin at the time, "Ben Hur," the 181-foot long, triple-decker leisure steamboat, was also destroyed by the flood.

July 6, 1869

The dams and Town Lake did not exist at this time, so the Colorado River was normally small as it ran through Austin and was commonly called a "stream". The month of July started with rains at short intervals causing the Colorado River to rise gradually. On the 6th, a flood came down the river in walls causing it to overflow at an alarming rate. According to Brown's Annals in the Austin History Center, "the mass of waters rushed down from the narrow and confined channel between the mountains above, to the wider one below, with such fearful velocity that the middle of the stream was higher than the sides, and the aspect it presented was appalling."

Do you have any memorable flood stories? We would like to hear about it! Send stories and/or copies of photos to:
Kevin Shunk, City of Austin Watershed Engineering Division, P.O. Box 1088, Austin, TX 78767.