Hurricane Harvey -- not a hyperlocal weather post
WxNut2.0 said:
my view, plus some video.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ec4v330fb4vadcj/Video%20Aug%2026%2C%203%2058%2047%20PM.mp4?dl=0
Need a dropbox account to read/see it.
Should be public? Not working?
ridski said:
WxNut2.0 said:
my view, plus some video.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ec4v330fb4vadcj/Video%20Aug%2026%2C%203%2058%2047%20PM.mp4?dl=0
Need a dropbox account to read/see it.
WxNut2.0 said:
Should be public? Not working?
ridski said:
WxNut2.0 said:
my view, plus some video.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ec4v330fb4vadcj/Video%20Aug%2026%2C%203%2058%2047%20PM.mp4?dl=0
Need a dropbox account to read/see it.
Okay, I see it now.
Max, is there any update on additional rain expected for Houston. I've heard a lot of conflicting accounts. And when is the rain expected.
Also - I suspect the 30,000 number in shelters is just a very small percentage of the actual number that has been displaced. My daughter's circle in Houston is not that large but she has at least 5 co-workers and/or friends who have been flooded out of their homes and are staying with friends and relatives.
Also, does anyone know how to find an elevation map of houston that is readable or understandable. I'm trying to determine the difference in elevation of 7099 Greenbriar, and Brays Bayou which is 5 blocks away.
My daughter is on the second floor of a sturdy building, but I worry ! She was prepared to evacuate in advance of the storm but local officials actually asked people NOT to evacuate and to stay in place. Not that she could consider it now. Every highway out of Houston is closed and although her building is dry, she's seen people in kayaks and rowboats rowing down her street.
Sarah, here are (theoretically) some maps of a project around Brays Bayou. I am having trouble loading them (everything is slow here today), but there seems to be a place to enter an address, don't know with what result.
Best wishes to your daughter!! I'm sure she'll do the sensible thing(s).
"She was prepared to evacuate in advance of the storm but local officials actually asked people NOT to evacuate and to stay in place. "
I heard the Mayor of Houston trying to justify this this morning and say he would do it again. That is not going to play well. Sometimes it is just best to say "we made a decision based on our best judgement at the time but things did not develop as we expected and that decision was wrong."
I'm reminded of all the people in the WTC who were urged to stay in place immediately after the planes hit the twin towers. More might have survived if they had evacuated while they had the chance.
MJC, THANK YOU. This puts her solidly in the 500 year flood zone. Unfortunately, this is an 800 year flood. Since she's on the second floor I think she will be just fine. So far her street has experienced various levels of flooding but her building remains dry. Thanks again for the links
It's always easy to second guess a decision. In Hurricane Rita in 2005, Houston evacuation was recommended, and the roads became clogged and impassable for over 12 hours causing huge problems and much criticism for that decision. If millions tried to evacuate at the same time, the problem could well have been repeated along with the critique.
People who have been in Houston a long time have said that the city is too big to evacuate. They only had 2 days notice and it is impossible to evacuate 6 million people from the city in two days. They say more people would have died trying to get out than would die by staying in place. We've learned our lesson. The next time a hurricane threatens she will get in the car and hear for Ft Worth where we have relatives.
how about getting them out of their homes to higher ground? Why couldn't they have done that? I also find it hard to believe that a city like this could have no viable 2 day evacuation plan. Didn't we learn anything from Katrina?
It's a tough sell with respect to evacuations here. You have to remember, Harvey wasn't forecast to be a hurricane in Houston. There was no concern that levees would fail. People knew that something bad was going to hit the coast, but the forecast for a tropical storm (what it was forecast to be around Houston, not a hurricane mind you) doesn't generally inspire panic in a region where that's fairly common. The issue here has been the slow movement of the storm and the high rates of rain compounded. But even though the rain totals were almost miraculously well forecasted, its tough to get one of the largest cities in the US to evacuate at the threat of rain. What if that forecast had failed? Nobody sees significant rainfall three days in on a satellite. Its not something people can grasp.
conandrob240 said:
how about getting them out of their homes to higher ground? Why couldn't they have done that? I also find it hard to believe that a city like this could have no viable 2 day evacuation plan. Didn't we learn anything from Katrina?
Saying something like "We're expecting a biblical flood in two days but you can't see it yet" isn't going to get people to evacuate, plain and simple.
WxNut2.0 said:
It's a tough sell with respect to evacuations here. You have to remember, Harvey wasn't forecast to be a hurricane in Houston. There was no concern that levees would fail. People knew that something bad was going to hit the coast, but the forecast for a tropical storm doesn't generally inspire panic in a region where that's fairly common. The issue here has been the slow movement of the storm and the high rates of rain compounded. But even though the rain totals were almost miraculously well forecasted, its tough to get one of the largest cities in the US to evacuate at the threat of rain. What if that forecast had failed? Nobody sees significant rainfall three days in on a satellite. Its not something people can grasp.
conandrob240 said:
how about getting them out of their homes to higher ground? Why couldn't they have done that? I also find it hard to believe that a city like this could have no viable 2 day evacuation plan. Didn't we learn anything from Katrina?
But I bet you knew.
See my original post -- the forecast two days out was 15 - 25", possible 35" in bands. I think officials just went into denial. Which is a very human response.
But I also agree that moving 1 - 2 million people out of a flood zone in two days is not possible.
And how do you tell 1 - 2 million people that their communities are no longer viable? The Economist has a story in this week's issue about getting people to move out of the lower delta in Louisiana, where thousands of square miles of land have simply ceased to exist, and the difficulties they are having. If large swaths of the Gulf Coast, Florida, and the Atlantic Barrier Islands from Georgia to Maine are at risk, how do we move those communities?
max_weisenfeld said:
WxNut2.0 said:
It's a tough sell with respect to evacuations here. You have to remember, Harvey wasn't forecast to be a hurricane in Houston. There was no concern that levees would fail. People knew that something bad was going to hit the coast, but the forecast for a tropical storm doesn't generally inspire panic in a region where that's fairly common. The issue here has been the slow movement of the storm and the high rates of rain compounded. But even though the rain totals were almost miraculously well forecasted, its tough to get one of the largest cities in the US to evacuate at the threat of rain. What if that forecast had failed? Nobody sees significant rainfall three days in on a satellite. Its not something people can grasp.
conandrob240 said:
how about getting them out of their homes to higher ground? Why couldn't they have done that? I also find it hard to believe that a city like this could have no viable 2 day evacuation plan. Didn't we learn anything from Katrina?
But I bet you knew.
See my original post -- the forecast two days out was 15 - 25", possible 35" in bands. I think officials just went into denial. Which is a very human response.
But I also agree that moving 1 - 2 million people out of a flood zone in two days is not possible.
And how do you tell 1 - 2 million people that their communities are no longer viable? The Economist has a story in this week's issue about getting people to move out of the lower delta in Louisiana, where thousands of square miles of land have simply ceased to exist, and the difficulties they are having. If large swaths of the Gulf Coast, Florida, and the Atlantic Barrier Islands from Georgia to Maine are at risk, how do we move those communities?
Yes, I knew. The whole meteorological community knew. But how do you convey something so hypothetical to people and have them believe the gravity of it? I'm not sure it's a matter of denial. I think its a really interesting social science question though. How do you convey a danger that is completely invisible to the average person until its already started?
conandrob240 said:
so, you just do nothing?
What do you do? Hundreds died in their cars during Rita I believe, as they tried to evacuate. What is more likely to cause mass casualties? Telling people to stay put, or putting 2 million people on a highway at the same time as flood waters rise? Seems like the latter is a recipe for a thousand+ deaths. Have you seen the traffic that these evacuations cause? I saw it the other day in Austin.
max_weisenfeld said:
And how do you tell 1 - 2 million people that their communities are no longer viable? The Economist has a story in this week's issue about getting people to move out of the lower delta in Louisiana, where thousands of square miles of land have simply ceased to exist, and the difficulties they are having. If large swaths of the Gulf Coast, Florida, and the Atlantic Barrier Islands from Georgia to Maine are at risk, how do we move those communities?
I do not know. But it is likely going to be inevitable that it will need to be done. There is some (very limited) precedent along the Mississippi.
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/jul/12/news/mn-2946
People have short memories. Shore real estate in communities affected by Sandy have largely become more upscale and costly Building the houses on stilts is not likely to be effective long term if the stilts wind up being permanently in water.
Is evacuation even viable given the infrastructure of today's major cities, roadways, and capacity of available mass transit? Given the same amount of rainfall Houston is experiencing, NYC would be equally devastated. So would just about any place. With the impact on rising water levels from global warming we need to consider ways to manage water flow rather than rely on dunes, dikes, and levees. Evacuation on the scale we are discussing on this thread may not be possible given our current technology.
I don't know the answer-I'm not experienced or educated in that field. However, as an observer, doing nothing seems a pretty piss-poor choice.
conandrob240 said:
I don't know the answer-I'm not experienced or educated in that field. However, as an observer, doing nothing seems a pretty piss-poor choice.
Well that's rather easy to say then, isn't it? It takes many days to evacuate an entire city. They didn't have that time. And a last minute evacuation would've killed many thousands.
The death toll from Rita was about 111. But only about 31 were deemed to be a result of the evacuation, 24 of which were the result of a single incident, a bus that caught fire with elderly on board from a nursing home, with oxygen tanks a contributing cause)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4944838
WxNut2.0 said:
What do you do? Hundreds died in their cars during Rita I believe, as they tried to evacuate. What is more likely to cause mass casualties? Telling people to stay put, or putting 2 million people on a highway at the same time as flood waters rise? Seems like the latter is a recipe for a thousand+ deaths. Have you seen the traffic that these evacuations cause? I saw it the other day in Austin.
I understand full scale evacuation sounds like a no go but then why was the alternative to do what seems to be nothing? Shouldn't a city of this size have safe places people can go? Or was mass rescue decided to be the best option?
ska said:
The death toll from Rita was about 111. But only about 31 were deemed to be a result of the evacuation, 24 of which were the result of a single incident, a bus that caught fire with elderly on board from a nursing home, with oxygen tanks a contributing cause)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4944838
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjMyqiB1_rVAhUjxoMKHVu6ANgQFgg0MAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2005%2FUS%2F09%2F23%2Fbus.fire%2F&usg=AFQjCNH-xqgaE3O7HHG1u0jx1YkofjJUSw
WxNut2.0 said:
What do you do? Hundreds died in their cars during Rita I believe, as they tried to evacuate. What is more likely to cause mass casualties? Telling people to stay put, or putting 2 million people on a highway at the same time as flood waters rise? Seems like the latter is a recipe for a thousand+ deaths. Have you seen the traffic that these evacuations cause? I saw it the other day in Austin.
I'm mistaken. Must be a different storm. That said:
http://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-evacuations-traffic-jam-drowning-deaths-2017-8
conandrob240 said:
I understand full scale evacuation sounds like a no go but then why was the alternative to do what seems to be nothing? Shouldn't a city of this size have safe places people can go?
Like a second, identical city that remains empty when there isn't a mass evacuation?
yup, that's what I meant. Not huge stadiums, universities or neighboring towns. A large empty city. Problem solved.
conandrob240 said:
how about getting them out of their homes to higher ground? Why couldn't they have done that? I also find it hard to believe that a city like this could have no viable 2 day evacuation plan. Didn't we learn anything from Katrina?
Have you ever been to Houston. There is very little higher ground. A lot of the surrounding suburbs were harder hit than Houston. There was no where to go unless you could drive to Dallas.
And Houston Traffic is the worst I have seen anywhere. During the day, not during rush hour the major arteries are almost always backed up.
The population inside Houston's inner loop is around 600,000. That's about 1/3 the population of Manhattan. Imagine trying to evacuate 1/3 the people in Manhattan in 2 days without public transportation.
okay, perfect then. All was handled really well. I stand corrected.
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my view, plus some video.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ec4v330fb4vadcj/Video%20Aug%2026%2C%203%2058%2047%20PM.mp4?dl=0