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Actually had a moment of becoming verklempt today while watching the coverage of volunteers with their little rowboats in the streets of Houston. In some shots, the streets were full of boats. For our country, for this generation, this is their Dunkirk.

That generosity of spirit that drives people to help total strangers just because they are in need--This is the best of us.
 
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same here. expecting a lil over 20" spread out over 5 days.

i'm seeing lots of hindsight and second guessing now that this has become an all out Catastrophe.

the above was what was forecast for the area prior to landfall.

that will cause some flooding in the areas known to flood.

what actually fell out of the sky was much worse and not over yet.

20" in 5 days is a lot. it's bad.
Last year, Baton Rouge flooded with just over 21" in a 2 and a half day time frame.
Rainfall rates peaked at around 2" per hour.

Southeast Houston (including where i was staying) rained all day Saturday. Then in a 4 hour window starting around midnight, got 22" +. Some places got to 25" during that band. That's a rate of more than 6" per hour.

Houston averages around 50" of rain per year.
parts of the city will hit that number over a 3-5 day stretch.


that's why the city wasn't evacuated before hand. Well that and evacuating 6 million people can't be easy.

nobody saw THIS coming.

I was there and saw all the forecasts.
people in areas prone to flooding were warned to be ready for it because of heavy rains.

but Noah might be the last person to ever seen such a large amount in such a small time period.


and for comparison's sake:
estimated volume of Katrina flood waters in Louisiana is somewhere north of 250 billion gallons. and that is with multiple massive holes connecting NOLA to the lake and gulf.

Houston's is already over a trillion gallons.
and that's just what fell from the sky.
 
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that's why the city wasn't evacuated before hand. Well that and evacuating 6 million people can't be easy.

nobody saw THIS coming.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-t...ta-anxiety-leads-to-hellish-fatal-6521994.php

To piggyback off of this, almost as many people died in the evacuation of Hurricane Rita as in the hurricane itself. Not being able to accurately forecast this strange storm until 24 hours prior aided in the city being in a lose-lose scenario. Hindsight is 20/20, but it's hard for me to pinpoint blame on not evacuating, given the unique circumstances. I live in Austin and offered my place to a few friends in Houston early last week just in case, but the models were so inconsistent that no one took me up on it and laughed it off. Hell, even on Thursday there were thoughts that they would get hit, but that it might turn towards central Texas instead.
 
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That SA article is fascinating. This part is a trip:

"How can Harvey produce such extreme rainfall even though it is no longer over the ocean?
The answer to this is fascinating. Normally a hurricane pulls moisture up from the ocean and releases it as rain all around the storm’s area, particularly in the northeastern quadrant. But Harvey has dropped so much water over such a large area of southeastern Texas that the storm is pulling that water back up into itself and dumping it again as more rain. The flood area is so far and wide that it is acting like part of an ocean, feeding warm moisture up into Harvey. “You only need about 50 percent of the land to be covered with water for that to happen,” Masters says. “Obviously we have more than that in Texas.”

The vision in my head is of a huge wet-dry vac pumping water out of the basement and then releasing it back into the basement window well.
 
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With the forecasted path, the story of flooding from this storm is far from over. All that rain that's going to be dumped in northern LA and Arkansas, is just going to be flowing right back down all those rivers and streams keeping the water levels high for even longer.

And holy shit, just heard them say on CNN there's a gator park owner who's concerned because despite the certified high fence, the water level is only about 8" from the top of it, and the forecast is for 10"+ of rain still to come, so...a bunch of gators (think they said over 100?) are likely to join the flood waters in that immediate area.
 
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