Turn around, don’t drown are the four words Dena Mahan, emergency management coordinator for League City, wants drivers to remember as thunderstorms batter the county.

The flash flood warning issued by the National Weather Service was extended to 4:30 p.m. If you are going to be out driving around League City check out the city’s Facebook page. The public information office is updating the status of flooded and closed streets.

In response to Saturday's home invasion by a man posing as a utility worker, League City has posted a video to help residents spot a real city employee versus an imposter.

A utility worker never needs to go inside your house, said Nancy Massey, the city's utility billing manager, in the video. The video has a slide show of city employees in their uniforms and name badges while they stand in front of city marked vehicles.

Anybody suspicious about a city worker can call the police department's nonemergency number, 281-332-2566, to verify their employment, the video states.

The video is informative and the music is pretty good, too. Hopefully the city's marketing department comes up with a web game next. Something like whack-a-mole but where you get to whack thieves posing as city employees.

The residents in League City think they’re pretty smart. It turns out they may have some proof to back up that claim.

The Business Journals’ On Numbers, a division of American City Business Journals, ranked League City as one of the top ten smartest cities in Texas, and 99th in the U.S., with a population between 50,000 and 99,000.

The Journal decided that League City residents were smarter than most by looking at 2009 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Turns out a little less than 6 percent of residents 25 or older dropped of high school and an impressive 40 percent of the residents have at least a bachelor’s degree.

Other Texas cities on the list were College Station, The Woodlands, Frisco, Flower Mound, Sugar Land, Allen and Pearland.

But of course the bright folks up in League City didn’t need the Journal to tell them how smart they are.

“This survey shows what many of us already know here in League City, that our residents are intelligent and forward-thinking individuals,” said Rich Oller, acting city manger, in a news release.

Now it’s time to put those smarts to good use.

“We hope that they will continue to use their brainpower to help guide the city by participating in the government process,” Oller said.

LEAGUE CITY — In what reads like a real life episode of the popular TV show “Glee,” the students in the Symphonic Treble Choir at Clear Creek Intermediate have won a $1,500 classroom make over by putting together their own classroom musical.



The students in Skyler Yancey and Summer Brauer choir class entered and won a competition hosted by the nationally syndicated Kidd Kraddick radio morning show. Their song was broadcast on the radio and they got to turn in a list of improvements they’d like for their classroom: new paint and fabric on the walls, a projector, a karaoke machine and a disco ball.

What’s the disco ball for?

“So we can dance,” said Lauren Radcliffe, a seventh grader in the class.

Below is the video the students sent in to the Kidd Kraddick show. Brauer and Yancey said the students in the Symphonic choir and the boys in the sixth grade choir class worked to adapt a song from the “Hairspray” musical, “Mama I’m a Big Girl Now,” to fit the competition.

Related Story: Students win contest to fund classroom makeover

Sitting at the top of the polls, neck and neck with Mitt Romney, Herman Cain spoke at a local Tea Party event last night. Nearly 4,000 people came out to see the pizza mogul turned presidential hopeful.

Cain, known as the “Hermanator” to his friends, treated the crowed to a speech that had them waiving flags and shouting their support. Shouts of “Save us Cain” and cheers for Cain’s flat tax plan, known as the 999 Plan, which would scrap the current tax code and replace it with a 9 percent business, individual and national sales tax, could be heard throughout the night.

Cain’s rise in popularity has coincided with Texas Governor Rick Perry’s recent dive in the polls. Perry shot up in the polls when he first announced his candidacy but poor showings at Republican debates sent the Texas Governor into a tail spin.

The race to be the Republican nominee now looks to be between Cain and Romney but, of course, there is still plenty of time left for that to change. Perry, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and all the other candidates can still charge up from behind.

To keep up with the all the ups and downs in the presidential race the folks at Slate.com, an online current affairs magazine, have conveniently created this horse race view of the campaign. You can keep up with every surge and stumble.

Plenty of kids dream of being astronauts but how many ever think of running their own space communication and navigation network?

NASA must think some people are interested in learning how astronauts, mission controllers and scientists communicate during space missions. The agency is rolling out a game called NetworKing that puts players in charge of building a fast and efficient communication network.



Players start off with a ground station and must acquire satellites and more stations to build first a near earth network and then move out to a space network and a deep space network. Along the way players unlock NASA mission.

"For any young person who ever dreamed of one day contributing to space missions, NetworKing lets players develop a kingdom of multiple space communication networks working together to support space missions," said Barbara Adde, policy and strategic communications director for NASA.

The game can be downloaded or played online by clicking this link.

Do you have what it takes to build a complex communication system? Give it a whirl and find out.

LEAGUE CITY — After years of relying on an entirely volunteer fire department, Brad Goudie was recently hired as League City’s first full-time fire chief.

The department, which counts on a roster of about 125 volunteer members, will stay a volunteer force, but the new chief does have some challenges and important tasks ahead of him.

After his first couple of weeks on the job, Goudie sat down with The Daily News to talk about how his experience will serve him as the fire department’s first full-time chief. Below is the interview with Goudie.

Related Story: Chief tasked with combining emergency services