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Heavy Rains Ease around Houston but Flooding Remains after Hundreds of Rescues, Evacuations

Alvaro Trevino pulls a canoe with Jennifer Tellez and Ailyn, 8, after they checked on their home on Sunday, May 5, 2024, in Spendora, Texas. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Alvaro Trevino pulls a canoe with Jennifer Tellez and Ailyn, 8, after they checked on their home on Sunday, May 5, 2024, in Spendora, Texas. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)
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Heavy Rains Ease around Houston but Flooding Remains after Hundreds of Rescues, Evacuations

Alvaro Trevino pulls a canoe with Jennifer Tellez and Ailyn, 8, after they checked on their home on Sunday, May 5, 2024, in Spendora, Texas. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Alvaro Trevino pulls a canoe with Jennifer Tellez and Ailyn, 8, after they checked on their home on Sunday, May 5, 2024, in Spendora, Texas. (Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle via AP)

Floodwaters closed some Texas schools on Monday after days of heavy rains pummeled the Houston area and led to hundreds of rescues including people who were stranded on rooftops.

A 5-year-old boy died after riding in a car that was swept away in fast waters, authorities said.

Although forecasters expected storms to begin tapering off in southeastern Texas, high waters continued to close some roads and left residents facing lengthy cleanups in neighborhoods where rising river levels led to weekend evacuation orders.

Houston is one of the most flood-prone metro areas in the country. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 dumped historic rainfall that flooded thousands of homes and resulted in more than 60,000 rescues.

In one soggy area of Houston, school officials in Channelview canceled classes and said a survey of their employees found many of them had experienced circumstances that would prevent them from coming to work.

"These folks have suffered much, people," Trinity County Sheriff Woody Wallace said Sunday during a Facebook livestream as he rode a boat through a rural flooded neighborhood. Partially submerged cars and street signs peeked above the water around him.

Areas near Lake Livingston, located northeast of Houston, received upwards of 23 inches (58 centimeters) of rain over the past week, National Weather Service meteorologist Jimmy Fowler said.

In Johnson County, south of Fort Worth, a 5-year-old boy died when he was swept away after the vehicle he was riding in became stuck in swift-moving water near the community of Lillian just before 2 a.m. Sunday, an official said.

The child and two adults were trying to reach dry ground when they were swept away. The adults were rescued around 5 a.m. and taken to a hospital, while the child was found dead around 7:20 a.m. in the water, Johnson County Emergency Management Director Jamie Moore wrote in a social media post.

Storms brought 9 inches (23 centimeters) of rain in a span of six to eight hours in some areas from central Texas to the Dallas-Fort Worth area, National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Stalley said.

Since last week, storms have forced numerous high-water rescues in the Houston area, including some from the rooftops of flooded homes.

Greg Moss, 68, stayed put in his recreational vehicle on Sunday after leaving his home in the community of Channelview in eastern Harris County near the San Jacinto River. A day earlier, he had packed up many of his belongings and left before the road to his home flooded.

"I would be stuck for four days," Moss said. "So now at least I can go get something to eat."

Moss moved his belongings and vehicle to a neighbor’s home, where he planned to stay until the waters recede. The floodwaters had already gone down by a couple of feet and he wasn’t worried his home would flood because it’s located on higher ground, Moss said Sunday.

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Varieties

China’s Tourists Flock to Experience Pretend Typhoon as ‘Dark Tourism’ Flourishes

Participants brace for surging water in a flash flood simulator at the Lvxing center in Hangzhou (Reuters)
Participants brace for surging water in a flash flood simulator at the Lvxing center in Hangzhou (Reuters)
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China’s Tourists Flock to Experience Pretend Typhoon as ‘Dark Tourism’ Flourishes

Participants brace for surging water in a flash flood simulator at the Lvxing center in Hangzhou (Reuters)
Participants brace for surging water in a flash flood simulator at the Lvxing center in Hangzhou (Reuters)

When Leon Lv was looking for somewhere to travel last year, she turned to the Chinese social media app RedNote for ideas. The algorithm took her to videos of people struggling to survive typhoon-strength winds and flash floods.

“I never experienced a typhoon. I don’t know how it will feel and what will happen. I just have seen it on the news,” said the 28-year-old from Chongqing in southwest China. “So that’s why I want to go there to have a safe place to experience it and learn something.”

She travelled more than 1,300 kilometers to Hangzhou in the east, and joined a group of 20 to take part in a disaster simulation that featured a typhoon-fueled flooding scenario, according to The Guardian.

Standing in a simulated flood, her mind momentarily went blank as hundreds of tons of water swept people off their feet, and carried them towards a safety barrier.

As the surge hit, she forgot she was in a simulation. “One thing I learned is how to stay calm and protect myself during a flood. I learned how to use the right body position to stay safe,” she said. “No book and no school [can] teach me like that.”

Across Chinese social platforms phrases like “paying to suffer”, or “paying to buy fear” are trending online as part of a wave of interest in experiences known as “dark tourism.”

Lvxing Base, a company in Hangzhou offering simulated disaster experiences has gone viral. The founders spent 10 years making documentaries in some of the world’s most extreme environments.

At a 200,000 square meter facility, which opened in 2024, they simulate extreme weather conditions like typhoons and mudslides, giving participants the experience of what it would be like in a disaster.

“I don’t deny that many people come because they want excitement,” said general manager Wang Kuanghan. "They want to see what this place is like, what a real typhoon and torrential rain feel like, and whether they themselves can withstand it. Most of our individual customers are between 20 and 30 years old.”

It plans to open five more centers across China within the next three years. It also plans to create earthquake and fire simulations.

Extreme weather has become increasingly common in China. In 2025, China recorded its highest number of hot days since records began, and was hit by 10 typhoons, well above the long-term annual average.

China’s ministry of emergencies reported that 67 million people were affected by such disasters across the country.

The new generation of Chinese travelers want to experience a place rather than simply see famous attractions,” said Robert Li, director of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

But some travelers have found a way to blend the two approaches; rather than indulging in the white-knuckle ride of a simulated typhoon, they are travelling to real sites of death and destruction.

In May 2008 a magnitude 8.0 earthquake devastated towns in China’s Sichuan province, killing more than 70,000 people.

Alice, a 30-year-old writer from Sichuan walked around Beichuan, one of the affected towns, the ruins of which the government had preserved. Metal beams hold collapsed buildings in place for the public to visit. She saw the site where schools collapsed, crushing students inside.

“I felt scared because of the power of nature and how many children and students could not escape from it,” said Alice, who plans to start a Chinese language Substack account detailing her journeys into tragedy. “Everything was so broken. It became like a ghost town, because nobody lives in the old town anymore.”

Alice believes dark tourism helps a country reconcile with its past, even if the government decides what can be remembered.

Varieties

Japan to Launch Historic Round-trip Mission to Mars Moon

(FILES) A vehicle assembly building is seen at the Tanegashima Space Center in Minamitane, Kagoshima prefecture on August 13, 2026. (Photo by Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP)
(FILES) A vehicle assembly building is seen at the Tanegashima Space Center in Minamitane, Kagoshima prefecture on August 13, 2026. (Photo by Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP)
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Japan to Launch Historic Round-trip Mission to Mars Moon

(FILES) A vehicle assembly building is seen at the Tanegashima Space Center in Minamitane, Kagoshima prefecture on August 13, 2026. (Photo by Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP)
(FILES) A vehicle assembly building is seen at the Tanegashima Space Center in Minamitane, Kagoshima prefecture on August 13, 2026. (Photo by Yuichi YAMAZAKI / AFP)

Japanese scientists are readying a mission to Mars's moons to retrieve samples that could help unlock the origins of the Solar System and life on Earth, in what aims to be the first round trip to the Martian region.

The unmanned Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) probe, a collaboration with US and European space agencies as well as numerous universities and tech companies, could also help lay the groundwork for eventual human exploration.

The flagship H3 rocket carrying the MMX is set to blast off from the Tanegashima Space Center Tuesday at 4:41 am (1941 GMT Monday), according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

The spacecraft will arrive near Mars one year later, where it will orbit its moon Phobos for up to three years before landing and collecting at least 10 grams (0.35 ounces) of material from the surface.

A rover dubbed IDEFIX -- the French name for the comic hero Asterix's dog -- will first conduct surface observations aimed at ensuring a safe landing.

"The sampling (from) Phobos is of course the world's first, but it means... this is the first round trip to the Martian system," MMX's project manager Yasuhiro Kawakatsu told AFP.

JAXA said the mission will also explore the possibility of using Phobos as a "natural space station" by establishing the requirements for a round trip to Mars -- something "essential for crewed Mars exploration".

It will also observe the Red Planet's moon Deimos, although it will not land on it, before returning to Earth.

JAXA hopes the mission will reveal how Mars and its two moons formed, a key piece of knowledge in working out how the Solar System was born.

One theory for the origin of the Martian moons -- the "giant impact" hypothesis -- is that they formed after a celestial body collided with Mars.

The "capture" hypothesis, meanwhile, postulates that the moons are asteroids captured by Mars's gravity.

Determining which is right will help reveal "how a habitable environment for life might have arisen on the terrestrial planets", JAXA said, referring to the four rocky worlds closest to the Sun -- Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

"MMX will shed light on the transport mechanisms that delivered water, volatiles, and organic compounds from the outer Solar System to the inner rocky planet region -- processes that may have played a key role in making these worlds habitable," said Patrick Michel, a French astrophysicist working on IDEFIX.

"If Phobos and Deimos are indeed remnants of these early delivery systems, they may hold clues to the origins of life itself, or, to be more correct, to the transport of the materials that were key to the emergence of life on rocky planets," he told AFP.

MMX is a collaboration with France's National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and about 20 universities and tech companies.

The development of the spacecraft's landing legs was particularly difficult, as gravity on Phobos is extremely weak, JAXA scientists say.

Japan's unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) -- the "Moon Sniper" -- tipped over after touching down on Earth's Moon in 2024, but still transmitted data and survived several two-week lunar nights.

Japan also has experience in bringing back samples from space, including JAXA's unmanned Hayabusa-2, which returned 5.4 grams of rock and dust collected from an asteroid several hundred million kilometers from Earth in 2020.

One of the differences between JAXA's past asteroid probes and the MMX mission is that this time "we have to travel very close to Mars and return", which means escaping the planet's heavy gravity, Kawakatsu told reporters.

Phobos orbits about 6,000 kilometers above the Martian surface.

"Going deep into what we call the 'gravity well' is difficult," Kawakatsu said.

US and Chinese space agencies have been racing to be the first to return rock samples from Mars's surface back to Earth.

NASA's Perseverance rover, which has been roaming the Red Planet since 2021, has already collected samples.

The mission, however, was effectively cancelled by the administration of President Donald Trump following a vote by the US Congress in January.

China, meanwhile, has announced its Tianwen-3 spacecraft is scheduled for launch around 2028 and hopes to return Mars samples to Earth as early as 2031 -- potentially before the MMX's return.

JAXA scientists say sand and rocks from Phobos may offer a wider variety of samples than those on the planet itself, especially if it was formed by a collision between a celestial body and Mars.

Varieties

Fisherman, 71, Killed by 12-foot Alligator Alongside Florida Lake

FILE - An alligator peers from the water's surface at the Circle B Bar Reserve, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in Polk County, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara, File)
FILE - An alligator peers from the water's surface at the Circle B Bar Reserve, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in Polk County, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara, File)
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Fisherman, 71, Killed by 12-foot Alligator Alongside Florida Lake

FILE - An alligator peers from the water's surface at the Circle B Bar Reserve, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in Polk County, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara, File)
FILE - An alligator peers from the water's surface at the Circle B Bar Reserve, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in Polk County, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara, File)

A 71-year-old man fishing on the shore of a Florida pond was attacked and killed on Friday by a nearly 12-foot alligator, the second fatal such attack reported this year.

Steven Hamilton of Winter Garden was standing on the shoreline of Lake Apopka at Dr. Bradford Memorial Park, 15 miles (24 kilometers) northwest of Orlando, when the reptile struck around 5 p.m., the Winter Garden Police Department said.

The presence of other active alligators in the water complicated any chance of rescuing Hamilton, whose body was recovered around two hours later, Winter Garden Fire Chief Jose Gainza told FOX35.

Hamilton's death marked the second deadly alligator attack in Florida this year.

After a 31-year-old Oviedo woman, Brittany Clark, was killed by a 13-foot alligator near her home in June, Republican US Rep. Greg Steube introduced a resolution calling for the Comptroller General and US Department of the Interior to study the impacts of the American alligator's listing as “threatened due to similarity of appearance” on Florida's ability to remove nuisance alligators from residential and commercial waterways.

He said the species has been fully recovered since 1987, but it remains protected to prevent trafficking and the hunting of the similar-looking American crocodile.

Using Florida state data, the two 2026 deaths bring the total number of individuals killed by alligators since 1948 to 34. Among them was a 61-year-old woman tipped out of her canoe by an alligator in 2025 and an 85-year-old widow who was dragged out of her backyard by an alligator while walking her dog in 2023.

According to The Associated Press, Police Capt. Michael Mason said authorities were not alerted in advance Friday that an alligator was near the shoreline of the lake, possibly because the lake “has tons of alligators in it.”

He said police have launched a joint investigation with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, whose trappers captured and killed the animal.

“Always be aware of your surroundings. Always be safe,” he said. “Wildlife: Respect it. Keep your distance. It looks like it's docile, it looks like your Florida emblem, but it can be dangerous.”