How many gallons of Houston's May rainfall would it take to ...

Keep clicking to see what you could do with 162 billion gallons of water.

less This week's catastrophic storms dumped over 162 billion gallons of water on the Houston area, flooding homes, streets and cars. We wanted to know what that amount of water looks like compared to, say, a running waterfall or a skyscraper. This week's catastrophic storms dumped over 162 billion gallons of water on the Houston area, flooding homes, streets and cars. We wanted to know what that amount of water looks like compared to, say, a running ... more Photo: Cody Duty, Houston Chronicle Photo: Cody Duty, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 30 Caption Close How many gallons of Houston's May rainfall would it take to ... 1 / 30 Back to Gallery

You probably didn't realize it when it happened, but the equivalent of 60 hours worth of the Niagara Falls fell on Houston overnight Monday.

The Houston Chronicle's Eric Berger wrote that Houston received around 162 billion gallons of water in a short period of time, courtesy of the unforgiving Gulf of Mexico.

You likely have seen photos of the nightmarish flooding across town but if you were to collect all that water, what would it look like? What could you do with it?

We looked around and crunched some numbers to find out how much water U.S. cities consume, how much water is used to make some of our favorite foods and products, and what the rainfall looks like compared to the world's grandest structures.

See the gallery above to get an idea of what 162 billion gallons looks like.