By Dr. John Neilsen-Gammon, Texas State Climatologist who writes in via email –
Based on my not-fully-vetted record compilation, Harris County Flood Control District gauge #110 just broke the all-time record for greatest 3-day total at a regular reporting station in the United States (outside of Hawaii).
The August 26-28 total is 36.80”, with 4.5 hours and about 2” still to come.
The previous record is from 1997 at Dauphin Island, Alabama, 36.14”. The record at any non-station remains 48” at Medina, Texas, August 1978, and the Hawaii regular reporting station record remains 48.75” at Honokane in 1942.
Total rainfall in 20,000 sq mi area over 72 hours, expressed as multiples of the average daily discharge of the Mississippi River (call them Mississippi-days), top United States storms:
18.8 Harvey
14.8 Beulah 1967 TX/MX
13.9 1899 TX
13.2 Georges 1998 FL
12.6 1994 TX
12.6 Floyd, NC
12.0 1940 (May) LA
11.3 1940 (Nov) TX
10.1 2010 TN
9.7 Alberto 1994 GA
I will update this story with final data when it is available. -Anthony
UPDATE: (edited for clarity) Since writing in a couple of hours ago, the total has increased, here is the latest as of 8PM PDT today: 38.64″ for the three-day total. And, 40.76″ since Harvey started making rain 4 days ago.
UPDATE2: The final number for a 3 day total is: 41.64″. And, 43.76″ since Harvey started making rain 4 days ago. See updated graph below:
Source: https://www.harriscountyfws.org/GageDetail/Index/110?span=7%20Days&v=rainfall
The media intrinsically seeks to present news as “newsworthy”, thus their tendency to
exaggerate. The Weather Channel was the absolute worst at this sort of thing – their
ratings depended upon hurricanes annd other extreme weather events. And, of course, every generation wants to believe that they are living in the most remarkable of times.
As they say, records are made to be broken – you can rest assured that whatever records Harvey may have set will be broken in the future – probability tells you that this has to happen.
So what else is new?
For myself and 99% of Americans, Harvey meant nothing to me. And I mean nothing.
I didn’t even watch any news coverage.
The recent eclipse affected me, Harvey didn’t.
Check the latest gas pump prices.
Still raining.
Yup. Hopefully this will be the last day of Harvey rain around Houston, and then we can get down to setting the all time mosquito record.
DDT. Why don’t you have any?
Is everyone forgetting that “Things are bigger in Texas!”
A Texan was bragging about everything how everything is bigger in Texas.
An Alaskan had had enough and told him that if he didn’t shut up, Alaska would split itself into two states and then Texas would only be the third largest state. 😎
It’s time to see all of the climate change expert predictions of perpetual drought in Texas. Give us the names, the source, the prediction, and the date of the prediction.
RG
From Treehugger…99% of Texas Still Suffers Severe Drought, Despite Recent Record-Breaking Rains.
Mat McDermott (October 18, 2011)
Several weeks ago the National Weather Service said there was no end in sight for the Texas drought; and here’s the kicker quote from climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon on the potential durations of all this:
…I’ve started telling anyone who’s interested that it’s likely that much of Texas will still be in severe drought this time next summer, with water supply implications even worse than those we are now experiencing…
Q&A with State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon
by Forrest Wilder, From The Observer
Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 10:13 am CST
TO: How long do you expect this drought to last? You said sometime back that looking at the cycles of the past and the cycles we’re in presently that this drought could last through the END OF THIS DECADE.
JNG: That’s certainly possible. I’m not wrong yet. [Laughs] It takes a lot longer to get in a drought than it does to get out of it….So you can’t really say more than a few months in advance whether a particular drought is likely to end or not. But over the long term the signals are still pointing towards DROUGHT..
From Wired. Nick Stockton 29/5/15. Headline.
THE TEXAS FLOODS ARE SO BIG THEY ENDED THE STATE’S DROUGHT.
How many major hurricanes in U.S. history stalled out or reversed course and lingered along the coast?
I am sure there is a record to break in there somewhere.
That all depends on your time scale , the quality of information varies a great deal so for 100 years its good but go back say 300 years and its bad at best and before that none existent .
Hence why great claims of ‘one in five hundred years ‘ are BS , there is no data at all about conditions 500 years ago , you could equally claim this type of event was typical then , and be just has ‘accurate’ as to the claims of it being usual.
Don’t you just love the current state of statistics? Must drive professional statisticians nuts.
I note the number of levees constructed to develop new subdivisions. Levees are now breaking. Who’d a thought that would happen?
The expected stuff. The insinuation is that if only deniers and big oil had been on board and a trillion more spent on CO2 emission reductions the severity of Harvey would have been much less.
“The Specter of Climate Change Hangs Over Hurricane Harvey”
Read it on nymag.com
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/the-specter-of-climate-change-hangs-over-hurricane-harvey.html
Excerpts:
“Was Hurricane Harvey the result of climate change? The answer is complicated because weather is complicated, and probably the best science can”
“In Houston, for instance, four “hundred-year” storms have struck since 2015. The result is a terrifying, radically accelerated experience of extreme weather — centuries worth of natural disaster compressed into just a decade or two.”
“The superstorms have already begun to arrive more often,” (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-013-1713-0)
” It’s a tragic irony that many of those new arrivals who moved into the path of this storm over the last decades were brought there by the oil business, which has worked tirelessly to undermine public understanding of climate change and derail global attempts at reducing carbon emissions. One suspects this is not the last 500-year storm those workers will see before retirement. Nor the last to be seen by the hundreds of oil rigs off the coast of Houston, or the several thousand more bobbing now elsewhere off the Gulf Coast, before the toll of our emissions become so brutally clear that those rigs are finally retired, too.”
Flooding on this scale is not new to the Houston area. What’s changed is the same thing as everywhere else along the nation’s coastlines. The population in Harris County has grown tremendously since I grew up there in the late 40’s and 50’s. There are literally millions more living there since I was a kid. Thus the big cost is economic and that cost is going to be epic.
The people there will prosper again because they will help each other out in their troubles. Human misery will translate to tales told about the great hurricane and flood of 2017 and how “I” survived it. It helps that there are so many boat owners in the area. Also, Texas has a $10 billion fund set aside for just this kind of catastrophe and has a permanent plan in effect for dealing with hurricanes and flooding.
If you noticed the years I lived there, know that I have tales to tell of flooding and hurricanes of the era.
On September 1st the weather pattern will change and the jetstream will direct the low at north over Texas.
http://files.tinypic.pl/i/00928/22mzt78rrus4.png
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2017/09/02/0600Z/wind/isobaric/850hPa/orthographic=-91.82,33.55,1806
So yes the storm was normal.
something you would expect.
why help people who dont prepare for a storm that is normal
Prepare for a hurricane if you live in a hurricane prone area?
Sure.
It may not be an annual occurrence for each and every square mile of a hurricane prone area, but, yes, prepare.
Help the people?
Sure. Lots of people willing to help.
Say a hurricane is somehow NOT normal or imply that a coal or other fossil fueled power plant “intensified” it?
That’s crap.
Magnify or distort the facts to promote “The Cause” of CAGW and its political/profit-potential implications?
That’s the hype people jump on.
Some mistook Anthony as promoting the hype for just reporting a fact of this natural disaster.
(A tropical storm almost killed me in Texas several decades ago. Good thing the old VW Bug actually did float!)
Zip my lips.
Because the enormous rainfall 200 miles away from landfall was not forecast and caught everyone by surprise. Significant rain is to be expected even from a Category I hurricane, but not 200 miles away from landfall and not to this extent. The damage in Houston and its surroundings dwarfs the damage (wind plus storm surge plus rainfall) done in the direct path of the storm. Therefore, it is reasonable to have empathy for the misfortunes of others. The forecast was a failure, because it is difficult to forecast a coupled non-linear chaotic multi-variate natural system, even on short time scales.
Two feet or more of rain over Houston over the next 7 days was forecast at Harvey landfall. NWS got it very right, particularly with the other (incorrect) spaghetti models showing westward or north ward movement. We were told it was going to be a “Allison-type” event. What was missed, I think, is an appreciation for the area involved in this event — an area dozens of times, may be a hundred times larger than Allison affected.
I didn’t mean to imply that the forecast was all wrong. The sheer magnitude of it, however, was not expected. The path of the storm may end up being forecast surprisingly accurately, as well. My main point was that I just don’t think that the inhabitants of Houston and its surroundings bear undue responsibility given the unexpected magnitude of the flooding. And it isn’t over yet. Had they prepared themselves for an Allison magnitude event, I don’t think many of them would have been adequately prepared for what is actually taking place. I think that surprised everyone. If you are right that the area affected may be a hundred times larger than Allison, that would be truly extraordinary.
Who said it was normal. Just another strawman.
Normal is a cycle on a washing machine. (from John P. McAfee’s book, “Slow Walk in a Sad Rain”)
Does this mean the permanent drought is over?
So to summarize:
1. Lower ground levels 10 – 20 feet with subsidence.
2. Lower “ground floor” level 1-2 feet with construction on slab
3. Relax flood zones and subsidize risk
4. Stir in an additional 5-10 million ill-educated people living on debt.
What could possibly go wrong ?
It should be ready for the next hurricane in the Atlantic.
http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php?color_type=tpw_nrl_colors&prod=natl×pan=24hrs&anim=html5
Still raining.
Hummingbirds are fighting for access to the feeder. F-22’s got nuthin’ on these little guys.
Always been fascinated by the flying of hummingbirds and dragonflies.
Lots of pros and cons with regard to record setting. If it is or isn’t, so what. Sooner or later records will get broken in a chaotic system. Just read the article for what it is.
Why is it that every previous cataclysmic event was a really bad but natural weather event, however the current one has got to be man made? Mark my words, NOAA will make a statement that this current event, though initially thought to be anthropogenic weather, was not, buuutttt the next current event will be man made.
It’s always intrigued me as to why such systems follow the path they do. Are they being pushed from or drawn towards areas of different pressures or temperatures?
Is the stalling of Harvey simply a matter of whatever forces that may be trying to have it move onwards being balanced by the energy required to draw the moisture from behind it much like a vacuum cleaner trying to attach itself to the carpet?