Behold...the power of Mother Nature:
This is an animation of the life cycle of tropical storm Imelda over 2 days...and actually this ends before the final worst of it yesterday afternoon. The darker colors, including the black, is when it was heaviest beyond what the radar can color.
First of all, we are OK and so is everyone we know (thank you to everyone who has checked in on us).
The farm is West of Houston so the rain, thankfully, was not nearly as bad out there. In fact, the first day of landfall it never even rained at the farm. Yesterday however, we ended up with almost 3" of rain out there. That's a nice soaking and desperately needed. Houston and surrounding areas however...
...yeah, that says 43" of rain.
One of the local stations said the color graphics on their radar to show rainfall totals could not get a grasp on the totals and couldn't come up with the right colors. There were also over 500,000 lightning strikes in a 24 hour period. One weather person on Twitter said they had never seen that many strikes in that time period in over 30 years in weather.
Just unbelievable the power this storm had considering it just came from nothing in a day.
As of yesterday, Houston has had:
2685 weather related telephone calls
1024 water related water rescues
544 flooded cars towed away
(I'm sure this number will go way up today)
I am waiting to see from 2nd Family how wet it is out there this weekend. Will need to check things out.
I've lived here 40 years. 2nd Man was born here. We have NEVER seen the likes of what we are seeing every single year here now. I remember in the late 70's into the 80's, we'd rarely have this kind of flooding. Sure we had hurricane Alicia in 1983 and it had a lot of rain. There were other storms that would drop some rain but nothing like the last few years. It might be 4 or 5 inches and that was a big deal when it happened because it was so rare.
Now we're regularly having thunderstorms dump 16 inches of rain in early Spring. Then another thunderstorm dumps 12 inches a few weeks later. Then we'll have a tropical storm with 25 inches and another thunderstorm with 35 inches, then hurricanes and more storms with 40, 50 and yes, Harvey, 60 inches of rain. They've gone from saying something is a "1 in 100 year" flood to "1 in 500 year" to "1 in 1000 year". Now we've had TWO "1 in a 1000 year" floods in in two years!
Something has definitely changed.
Still, we remain...
trumps says it's fake news. so glad you guys are okay!
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen much of this covered in the news I read. I wonder why?
ReplyDeleteYou’re right - the severity of the weather has definitely increased. It’s gotten to the point where everyone in Houston needs to have a boat in their backyard. I’ve seen so many heartbreaking rescue scenes on the Houston news. Glad y’all and the Farm are ok.
ReplyDeleteTexas Rose,
DeleteToday, as I watched the news, I thought I would buy a boat if I lived in Houston.
Have seen pictures on our local news but yet they can't cover everything. I'm sure it's much worse than what we see on the news here.
ReplyDeleteJust hope that you are all ok and that you didn't get stranded in the flood waters.
Thoughts and prayers go out to all who where effected and those that had to leave their homes and to the families who have lost loved ones.
Take care and stay safe.
That is a scary radar graphic. I have never seen black before.
ReplyDeleteWow that's an impressive graphic. We're all dealing with climate change. Some natural. Some man-made. Its like Mother Earth is trying to eject the human race like a festering splinter. I'm sure she will be successful eventually.
ReplyDeleteGlad you guys are okay -- it was a nasty storm!
ReplyDeleteAll you can do is learn from it. Maybe when you build the new farm house it should be 3 feet higher than the ground.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you and 2nd family are safe. Me and mine are doing well. My mother went on a retreat up north and missed all of it.
ReplyDelete