Hurricane Harvey Heading for Texas...

[Red Squirrel]

Woah damage looks pretty bad, they're showing it on the news. Pretty much leveled some cities. That's got to seriously suck. Pretty much have to start your life over. I guess at that point you're just happy if you and your loved ones are still alive, but still sucks either way.

 

[Darwin333]

When you build a levee at ~33ft in the '20s-'30s, there isn't much that can be done to keep it at 33ft, especially when the surrounding area is sinking and stretching further out into the Gulf due to erosion.

There are several stories about decisions made close to 100 years ago that contributed to what happened during Katrina.

In fact, there are much higher levees around Cairo, IL, and the flooding in that area gets so bad, that even the bridges on US 51/60/62 are impassable.

The height of the levees wasn't the problem. The fact that they catastrophically failed was the problem, the forces Katrina put on the levees did NOT exceed the design limits and if they were properly maintained would not have failed. That and another Federal project directed by Congress, the MR-GO canal (now nicknamed Hurricane Alley) that was almost completely unused and was warned that a hurricane could funnel storm surge through it decades before Katrina and did in fact contribute to a ton of the flooding. It's since been decommissioned and a permanent storm barrier installed. Hell the residents of St Bernard, the people it was supposed to help, even voted to have it shut down before Katrina. Fun fact, prior to Katrina approx 300 ships that it was built for used it a year and it cost $13,000,000 a year to maintain on top of the $1 Billion it cost to build. That's roughly $45,000 in maintenance alone per ship a year.

 

[Dave_5k]

I don't think so... things are full to the brim at this point - see https://map.texasflood.org/#/map/ ....everything is full.

Additional rain is bad for local flooding, but the major flood protection for downtown Houston, the dams at Addicks and Barker reservoirs, still have about 10 feet of room (if these overtop or have major breach, looking at Katrina-level disaster). In theory these have 400,000 acre-feet of water retention capacity to keep upstream drainage from flooding downtown Houston (via Buffalo Bayou). Not quite half full yet, April 2016 was prior peak usage at about 200,000 acre-feet of water behind the dams.

https://www.harriscountyfws.org/GageDetail/Index/2110?span=24 Hours&v=surfaceBox

 

[Ajay]

Holy crap that's like 40 - 50 feet?

Yeah huh? That pic totally freaked me out. Thought Texas might be a nice place to retired to someday - certainly not the southeast though

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Yeah huh? That pic totally freaked me out. Thought Texas might be a nice place to retired to someday - certainly not the southeast though

Pick your poison. If you live in the south or east near the coast, you're prone to hurricanes. If you live in the middle of the states you're prone to tornado alley. If you live in California you're prone to earthquakes.

 

[Darwin333]

Pick your poison. If you live in the south or east near the coast, you're prone to hurricanes. If you live in the middle of the states you're prone to tornado alley. If you live in California you're prone to earthquakes.

Yup. At least you can see a hurricane coming and GTFO of the way.

 

[bruceb]

Well they say everything is bigger in Texas, so why not the storms that Mother Nature sends their way as well ?

 

[UglyCasanova]

Just saw a dude in Houston driving an airboat down what looks like used to be a 4-5 lane city street on tv.

Cajun Navy showing up to help

 

[boomerang]

Woah damage looks pretty bad, they're showing it on the news. Pretty much leveled some cities. That's got to seriously suck. Pretty much have to start your life over. I guess at that point you're just happy if you and your loved ones are still alive, but still sucks either way.

What really sucks is when your workplace is destroyed too.

 

[Ajay]

Pick your poison. If you live in the south or east near the coast, you're prone to hurricanes. If you live in the middle of the states you're prone to tornado alley. If you live in California you're prone to earthquakes.

And if you live in New England you can freeze your nutz off every winter while breaking your back shoveling snow (OK, so I have a plow guy now - but haven't always). Seriously though, I'm just starting to get some arthritis and it's a total PITA in the winter. Over the next ten years, I will probably come to hate New Hampshire because of the arthritis pain alone. Supposedly, warm, dry climates are da bestest.

 

[Ajay]

Anyway, hope y'all do well down there. Last time I checked the weather that mother is just hanging out blowing rain up yer arses.

 

[bruceb]

Come on down to North Carolina ... we get all sorts of temps and weather down here. Or you could go to Florida or Nevada for warmer weather. But Florida has a lot of bugs and snakes and gators and it is on a peninsula so evacuating when a hurricane comes along is hard.

 

[lxskllr]

And if you live in New England you can freeze your nutz off every winter while breaking your back shoveling snow (OK, so I have a plow guy now - but haven't always). Seriously though, I'm just starting to get some arthritis and it's a total PITA in the winter. Over the next ten years, I will probably come to hate New Hampshire because of the arthritis pain alone. Supposedly, warm, dry climates are da bestest.

I'll trade ya. MD for NH. It's warm, but not so dry. I'd love to have some real winters. My back's fuxxored. If 4x4 and some light shoveling isn't enough to get out, I stay where I am. Being snowed in for a week or two at a time would be great. No work, a fire going, whisky, and quiet. Life doesn't get better than that.

 

[bruceb]

I came from NJ so I have had my fill of winter conditions.

 

[BUTCH1]

The gulf has very warm water which drives rapid intensification if the tropical system gets organized. With most of the temperature increase from global warming being absorbed by the oceans the gulf ends up having even more energy for storm development.

If Harvey had been out in the Gulf for one more day prior to land-fall it would have easily been a cat 5 storm before it slammed into Texas. All those who think global warming is a joke just need to look at the last 15 years of hurricanes and how rapidly they intensify now. We got a bit of a break last year when Matthew jogged 10 more miles off-shore as it swept past the Daytona area. This slight jog meant we had 95MPH winds vs 130. Might not seem like a lot, but it saved many homes from destruction from falling trees, it still took months for the crap to get all cleaned up and we had no power for 5 days, thank God I had a 5Kw genny and 35 gallons of gas on hand. Good luck to those still getting that insane rain bands, the issue becomes that these bands sweep back out into the Gulf and gather yet more water to dump onto already flooded areas.

 

[bruceb]

Global warming is occurring to some degree, but that is partly a normal occurrence and in part, due to the depletion of the rain forest, without replanting new trees. That is the biggest reason the ecosystem is getting a bit out of whack.

 

[Red Squirrel]

What really sucks is when your workplace is destroyed too.

Do they actually lay people off when that happens? That really does suck if they do. Not only do you need to build a new house but you need to find a new job. I guess it could be a blessing in disguise, you can pretty much just abandon ship and go move somewhere else.

 

[IronWing]

Do they actually lay people off when that happens?

Small businesses can be wiped out and never re-open. Even businesses that aren't damaged by the storm can be wiped out as their customers don't exist anymore.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Small businesses can be wiped out and never re-open. Even businesses that aren't damaged by the storm can be wiped out as their customers don't exist anymore.

Guess it makes sense especially for small businesses, it's probably not worth for them to try to rebuild and restart everything.

I guess it really depends on the job too, like at my job if there was a storm like that it would be all hands on deck to try to get the telecommunication system back up so even office workers would probably be doing outside work. Though there would be lot of work to do inside the CO too. Damn, can't even imagine how crazy it would get.

But yeah anything like stores or service companies etc that arn't critical would probably just close.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Ahhh good ol' Houston with such fine people that take the opportunity of people suffering to loot stores. Stay classy you piece of shit city.

Update from my side: Looks like we finally are at a pause for the day, it hasn't rained the last 4 hours or so. Just hoping that space is made for us to handle more inevitable rain in the next 2 days

 

[Brainonska511]

Ahhh good ol' Houston with such fine people that take the opportunity of people suffering to loot stores. Stay classy you piece of shit city.

Update from my side: Looks like we finally are at a pause for the day, it hasn't rained the last 4 hours or so. Just hoping that space is made for us to handle more inevitable rain in the next 2 days

Probably the same thing that happens in any disaster: A few assholes take advantage to enrich themselves.

 

[K1052]

Seeing that a lot of the models have Harvey hooking back over water, probably picking up some strength, then hitting Houston head on.

 

[FeuerFrei]

Houston had a pretty large influx of New Orleaners, back in the day. There's your problem.

Looks like the eastern half of Houston is in for a respite from the deluge.

National Guard is rolling southward from Temple, Texas.

BTW, "GAS LEAKING FROM a new gas station (Mobil) built on monroe & 45 south.... the smell is SICKENING ......"

 

[BUTCH1]

Global warming is occurring to some degree, but that is partly a normal occurrence and in part, due to the depletion of the rain forest, without replanting new trees. That is the biggest reason the ecosystem is getting a bit out of whack.

And all of it is done for cheap beef. When I worked at Swift we used to get South American beef in 50lb frozen blocks, it was then sent through a chipper and we used it for hamburger. The rain forest cleared quickly loses the ability to grow much of anything since when the rain forest was there stuff got recycled back into the system quickly. The answer?, cut down more trees.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Those things are weird. The colonies behave like both a fluid and a solid.

You know why they call them fire ants? Because when you find them, you set them on fire before they spread like wildfire and feel like fire when they swarm you or the native black ants. Fire!