First, here’s what is going on:
Hurricane Harvey Advisory Number 21
NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL AL092017
1000 AM CDT Fri Aug 25 2017
…OUTER RAINBAND FROM HARVEY SWIPING THE LOWER AND MIDDLE TEXAS
COASTS…
…CATASTROPHIC FLOODING EXPECTED ACROSS PORTIONS OF SOUTHERN AND
SOUTHEASTERN TEXAS…
SUMMARY OF 1000 AM CDT…1500 UTC…INFORMATION
———————————————–
LOCATION…26.7N 96.0W
ABOUT 115 MI…185 KM SE OF CORPUS CHRISTI TEXAS
ABOUT 120 MI…195 KM SSE OF PORT OCONNOR TEXAS
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS…110 MPH…175 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT…NW OR 315 DEGREES AT 10 MPH…17 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE…947 MB…27.97 INCHES
WATCHES AND WARNINGS
——————–
CHANGES WITH THIS ADVISORY:
The Hurricane Watch south of Port Mansfield Texas to the Mouth of
the Rio Grande has been discontinued.
SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT:
A Storm Surge Warning is in effect for…
* Port Mansfield to High Island Texas
A Storm Surge Watch is in effect for…
* South of Port Mansfield Texas to the Mouth of the Rio Grande
A Hurricane Warning is in effect for…
* Port Mansfield to Sargent Texas
A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for…
* North of Sargent to High Island Texas
* South of Port Mansfield Texas to the Mouth of the Rio Grande
A Tropical Storm Watch is in effect for…
* South of the Mouth of the Rio Grande to Boca de Catan Mexico
A Storm Surge Warning means there is a danger of life-threatening
inundation from rising water moving inland from the coastline in the
indicated locations. For a depiction of areas at risk, please see
the National Weather Service Storm Surge Watch/Warning Graphic,
available at hurricanes.gov. This is a life-threatening situation.
Persons located within these areas should take all necessary actions
to protect life and property from rising water and the potential for
other dangerous conditions. Promptly follow evacuation and other
instructions from local officials.
A Hurricane Warning means that hurricane conditions are expected
somewhere within the warning area, in this case within the next 12
to 24 hours. Preparations to protect life and property should be
rushed to completion.
A Storm Surge Watch means there is a possibility of life-
threatening inundation from rising water moving inland from the
coastline in the indicated locations.
Interests in southwestern Louisiana should continue to monitor the
progress of this system.
For storm information specific to your area in the United
States, including possible inland watches and warnings, please
monitor products issued by your local National Weather Service
forecast office. For storm information specific to your area outside
the United States, please monitor products issued by your national
meteorological service.
DISCUSSION AND 48-HOUR OUTLOOK
——————————
At 1000 AM CDT (1500 UTC), the eye of Hurricane Harvey was located
by an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft and NOAA Doppler
radar near latitude 26.7 North, longitude 96.0 West. Harvey is
moving toward the northwest near 10 mph (17 km/h), but its forward
speed is expected to decrease significantly during the next couple
of days. On the forecast track, Harvey will make landfall on the
middle Texas coast tonight or early Saturday. Harvey is then likely
to meander near or just inland of the middle Texas coast through the
weekend.
Maximum sustained winds are near 110 mph (175 km/h) with higher
gusts. Some strengthening is possible, and Harvey is forecast to
become a major hurricane before it reaches the middle Texas coast.
Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 35 miles (55 km) from the
center, and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 140
miles (220 km). A buoy located about 40 miles east of South Padre
Island recently reported sustained winds of 42 mph (68 km/h) and a
gust to 54 mph (86 km/h).
The minimum central pressure based on data from the Air Force plane
is 947 mb (27.97 inches).
HAZARDS AFFECTING LAND
———————-
RAINFALL: Harvey is expected to produce total rain accumulations
of 15 to 25 inches and isolated maximum amounts of 35 inches over
the middle and upper Texas coast through next Wednesday. During
the same time period Harvey is expected to produce total rain
accumulations of 5 to 15 inches in far south Texas and the Texas
Hill Country over through southwest and central Louisiana. Rainfall
of this magnitude will cause catastrophic and life-threatening
flooding.
STORM SURGE: The combination of a dangerous storm surge and the
tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by
rising waters moving inland from the shoreline. The water is
expected to reach the following heights above ground if the peak
surge occurs at the time of high tide…
N Entrance Padre Island Natl Seashore to Sargent…6 to 12 ft
Sargent to Jamaica Beach…5 to 8 ft
Port Mansfield to N Entrance Padre Island Natl Seashore…5 to 7 ft
Jamaica Beach to High Island…2 to 4 ft
Mouth of the Rio Grande to Port Mansfield…2 to 4 ft
High Island to Morgan City…1 to 3 ft
The deepest water will occur along the immediate coast near and to
the northeast of the landfall location, where the surge will be
accompanied by large and destructive waves. Surge-related flooding
depends on the relative timing of the surge and the tidal cycle, and
can vary greatly over short distances. For information specific to
your area, please see products issued by your local National Weather
Service forecast office.
WIND: All last-minute preparations should be rushed to completion
since tropical storm conditions are likely just beginning in
portions of the hurricane and tropical storm warning areas.
Hurricane conditions are likely to begin within the hurricane
warning area later today or tonight. Tropical storm conditions are
likely to persist along portions of the coast through at least
Sunday.
SURF: Swells generated by Harvey are affecting the Texas,
Louisiana, and northeast Mexico coasts. These swells are likely to
cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions. Please
consult products from your local weather office.
TORNADOES: A few tornadoes are possible later today through
Saturday near the middle and upper Texas coast.
Harvey is expected to strengthen, according to NHC, and that may end the “major hurricane drought” we have been experiencing in the USA, now 4324 days since Hurricane Wilma made landfall in Florida on October 24th, 2005.
Some strengthening is possible, and Harvey is forecast to become a major hurricane before it reaches the middle Texas coast.
Some predictable headlines that you’ll likely see:
- Harvey’s rainfall was made worse due to climate change/global warming
- Harvey’s flooding was made worse due to climate change/global warming
- Harvey’s storm surge was made worse due to climate change/global warming
- Harvey’s maximum sustained winds were made worse due to climate change/global warming
- Harvey spawned more tornadoes due to climate change/global warming
- More storms like Harvey are in our future due to climate change/global warming
Some current alarmist headlines:
- Here’s Why Hurricane Harvey Is So Scary and Unprecedented
- Zombie storm comes back from the (mostly) dead to threaten Gulf Coast with biblical flooding
- Surprise: Hurricane Harvey Blamed On ‘Climate Change’
- Harvey’s intensity and rainfall potential tied to global warming
And there are sure to be more….
Some perspective for those who forget history:
The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 – Remembering the deadliest natural disaster in American history
The IPCC SREX report ( IPCC Special Report on Extremes PDF)
From Chapter 4 of the SREX:
- “There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change”
- “The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados”
- “The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses”
There’s simply no connection between droughts, hurricanes, thunderstorms, flash floods, tornadoes and “climate change”.
I imagine that it is only a short time, like a few hours, that alarmists will lay the blame on Humanity instead of Climate Change.
Oh my! Humans Killing Humans! Oh the Humanity!
Ha ha
And the difference to the situation in Yemen is – what, exactly?
Auto
The 174kph/114mph is at 850mlb or 5000ft! But I’m sure they’ll go with higher number. Kinda like they do with the temp record. The ground is where we live after all.
And, for the Hurricane measurements, supposed to be done at 10m of elevation.
That’s what you call “moving the goalposts”.
A harbinger of things to come. The Jet Stream will be promoted to a Hurricane.
Fortunately, since it’s Texas that’s getting hit, the only quote that reporters will be able to get from residents in the aftermath will be, “What hurricane? You mean that little sprinkle we had yesterday?”
I noticed that too. I’ve been checking it most of the day and didn’t see it more than 136 km/h = 85 mph. I find the highest now at 125 km/m = 78 mph.
These are listed as surface speeds. https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-93.67,23.97,1723/loc=-95.619,27.315
What height do they officially measure them? According to http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php Cat 3 is 111 – 129 mph.
10 metres, unobstructed.
On the ground in Corpus Christi, 2:45pm, the local weather station shows Rainy, Temp 75F, Wind at 33MPH from the North.
What happened to the permanent drought in Texas? /s
It’s a flooding drought. The worst kind!
Some models show it looping back out to sea before moving up the coast and coming back into land east of Galveston. If I were there I would be grabbing my bugout bag and leave NOW. 24+ inches of rain through the next 4 days, GTFO of dodge.
This is how Texans respond to hurricanes! They raised Galveston. Very interesting video.
There are some _really_ nice houses at Clear Lake (not too far from NASA) that are built that way at the waterfront. With storm surge in Galveston Bay at high tides, the water gets packed in, and rises right up the lawns. Prior to the 1901 hurricane, Galveston harbor was the busiest on the Gulf coast, now, not so much.
We have CAT 3:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCUAT4+shtml/251856.shtml
WTF? Cat 3 is 111-129 mph sustained according to the interweb. Nowhere near that.
The dystopians are getting desperate for bad news. I thought that only category 5 was noteworthy. Now category 3 is already being hyped. It’ll fizzle, then they will make the most of some wet ground and cardboard boxes bouncing along the street, with hair flapping melodramatically. Maybe some drowned earthworms will underline that we need to act now!
The Russians hacked our weather!
Looks like its gonna be a ripsnorter.
Batten the hatches me hearties and brace the halyards.
See you on the other side of midnight.
The AGW fear mongers aren’t doing themselves any favors by hyping Harvey as a product of global warming. Even the average Joe knows that we have been in a hurricane drought for over 10 years. If the warming is making the storms stronger, then why have they been weaker for the last decade. We are still way below average for landfalling hurricanes during any 10 year period. They more the make irrational claims, the more support they will loose.
That said…Harvey is going to be bad. It may take a week before we know just how bad it is going to be, but it is going to be bad! In the last few hours, it has taken on the structure of a very dangerous major hurricane. And while no surface station may report a sustained wind as strong as the Hurricane Center reports, the winds will be bad enough and last for long enough to dismantle whole regions along the Texas Coast. The storm surge flooding and rainfall flooding are going to be horrible and devastating. People are going to die.
I know this precisely because it is NOT unprecedented. This has happened many times before, and it has always been a real mess in the past. It will be so again this time.
I would encourage my fellow WUWT posters to avoid being cavalier with what is unfolding along the Texas Coast. It will be a disaster and many people will need our help and our prayers. In my experience, the Salvation Army does a much better job of providing that help than the Red Cross. (The Red Cross, on the other hand, does a much better job getting in front of the media and raising money.)
We can’t stop those who will attempt to turn this disaster into their political advantage, but we can stop from joining them on that level. Let’s have some respect for those who are about to suffer greatly.
Agree. Been following. I would have grabbed the go bag and gone if in Corpus Christy, just based on the prediction of future Cat 3. As posted above, my rule of thumb on evacuation is based on past personal experience. Afraid it is now too late for those who decided to hunker down. Read an hour ago about one man in his 60’s, lost drivers licence due to failing eyesight, caring for 40 yearbold handicapped son, wandering down street looking for food supplies and refusing reporter help. They thought they were on an automatic voluntary evacuation list. But weren’t and were not picked up. They are in a 1 story home lass than half mile from the coast, with inadequate food suppies.
I think that story is going to haunt me for a while. It makes you feel impotent knowing what might happen to them, and many others, while we can’t do much more than watch (and hope and pray).
Yup! I wish them all the best of luck down there with both wind and water. Hopefully, the storm stands off of land and the rain takes enough breaks to allow some run off to keep up with it.
It looks like Harvey is starting to slow down as the eye draws closer to the coast, coming up on 5 PM central time. This is more bad news.
Not good, but predicted by Joe Bastardi.
The NAS (Naval Air Station) in Corpus, just a bit in from the coast, is reporting 62, gusts to 75 on WunderMap. At the moment, this is tropical-storm strength. Come on, Harvey! Show us what you’re made of!
The deadliest hurricane ever to hit the US hit Galveston Texas and killed 8000 people. That happened in 1900, 117 years ago. Was that due to climate change? But of course this current hurricane could only be caused by man made climate change. /sarc.
Eyewall approaching the Coast now. Anybody see any winds in excess of 80mph?
It’s interesting that the advisory has been claiming winds of 130 Mph for a couple of hours now, just on the edge of cat 4. Did somebody at NOAA round up the wind speeds just to be sure and get the cat 4 rating, not that a cat 3 is a piece of cake …
Being rated at CAT 4 in the MSM here in Aus.
I’m right here Harvey you big one-eyed dork! Come and get some!!
Several reports of 130mph winds in succession – yet no shore station appears to have measured anything even close to that. 130mph is just at the very bottom of Cat 4. There must be suspicion that the category has been hyped. The Rockport weather station (the closest to landfall for which there is any report) only reports a pressure, not a windspeed in the 11 pm CDT update.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2017/al09/al092017.update.08260358.shtml?
I never imagined that “scientists” would become propagandists for the Left and follow Lenin’s axiom, “A lied told often enough soon becomes the truth.” Yet they have. Tropical cyclones are another one of those natural phenomenon that we didn’t know much if anything about until we put a satellite up. Before then unless a tropical cyclone came close to land or close to a ship it could come and go without ever being counted. Some of the first scientists to bail out of the UN-IPCC process were tropical cyclone experts who got tired of their research being misused. Dr. Gray wrote a paper explaining how global warming was not and would not be responsible for increased numbers or increased intensity of hurricanes. I lived through Donna, Camille, Hugo, and several tropical storms. I sat through a four hour lecture by the Navy on Camille. It was then and still is the strongest hurricane to make landfall. The Navy had a lot of data. NOAA not so much. Yet NOAA has in recent years changed their data to downgrade Camille. Also you should note that often the warnings for a storm are upgraded within 24-48 hours before making landfall. Not necessarily because the storm is going to increase to that level but because NOAA is afraid of understating the effects. I doubt seriously that anyone having lived through a hurricane makes decisions based on NOAA predictions the last 24 hours before a storm hits.
Just had the latest summary come in from a local university tropical cyclone expert. You will find it of interest.
*Discussion: *A technical note: NHC tends to up-grade storms at landfall.
The actual maximum one minute average 30 feet above ground is virtually
never measured, only inferred. Gusts can be 30% more or less than the one
minute average. Category 4 storm starts with msw winds of 130 mph and goes
to 155 mph. The maximum winds for this storm at landfall was 130. If it
had been 129, it would have been a category 3, not a category 4 storm.
This is great for the insurance companies, for it increases the probability
of a storm in the 130-155 range and thus justifies higher rates. But it is
now in the record books as a category 4 storm for 6 hours. Just sayin’.
Just like fake climate science, false and inaccurate quote attribution is rife on the internet.
It begins. Names of some of the usual suspects included. https://www.yahoo.com/news/cyclones-climate-change-connecting-dots-095128724.html