- Hurricane Harvey made landfall between Port Aransas and Port O’Connor in Texas Friday night, with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph.
- Harvey has been downgraded to a tropical storm, but dangerous rain and flooding continue, with as much as 40 inches of rain expected in some places.
- One fatality has been reported in Rockport, Texas, one of the cities hit hardest.
Hurricane Harvey made landfall between Port Aransas and Port O’Connor in Texas on Friday night, packing sustained wind speeds as high as 130 mph. The storm later made a second landfall on the northeastern shore of Copano Bay, Texas around 2 a.m. ET Saturday morning.
It has since been downgraded to a tropical storm with maximum winds of 60 mph. At 1 p.m. CDT on Saturday, the storm was sitting about 45 miles northwest of Victoria, Texas. But the National Hurricane Center is still warning of “life-threatening and devastating flooding.” Forecasters predict that the storm will stall until Tuesday, dumping up to 40 inches of rain onto parts of Texas.
“There is an unusual amount of moisture available to this storm, and it is large and powerful, so rainfall records could topple,” Jeff Masters, a meteorologist at The Weather Company who cofounded the weather-data website Weather Underground, told Business Insider.
A storm surge warning is still in effect from Port Aransas to High Island, Texas, which means “there is a danger of life-threatening inundation from rising water moving inland from the coastline,” according to the National Weather Service. (The storm surge is the quick rise in water caused by a hurricane’s strong winds.)
‘Widespread devastation’
So far, one death from Harvey has been confirmed in the coastal city of Rockport, reports the Associated Press.
On Saturday, accounts of destruction in the areas hit hardest by Harvey were starting to emerge. The Associated Press estimates that about 300,000 residents are currently without power.
Rockport seems to have sustained extreme damage. Cell service is out in the area, and residents have been told it is not safe to return for the time being (a mandatory evacuation was put in place there). Rockport Mayor Charles Wax told CNN that “there’s been widespread devastation.”
As the storm approached on Friday, Rockport Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Rios requested that people who chose not to evacuate write their names and social security numbers on their arms, in case rescuers later need to identify them.
Port Aransas, Texas was also impacted heavily. Mayor Charles Bujan told KIII TV that there are likely a few fatalities there, but a number cannot be confirmed. The city’s Pioneer Trailer Park, he said, suffered a “100-percent loss.”
Strong winds, flooding, and debris on roadways have kept emergency crews from reaching of many areas, so comprehensive surveys of the damaged areas have yet to be completed.
In a tweet Saturday morning, President Donald Trump commended the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for his handling of the hurricane. In a message addressed to FEMA head Brock Long, Trump said: “You are doing a great job – the world is watching! Be safe.”
Masters estimated on Thursday that Harvey could cause $ 10 billion in damage, but more recent estimates are higher. The last major hurricane to hit the Texas Gulf coast was Ike, a Category 4 storm that caused $ 38 billion in damage in 2008.
Why hurricane scales don’t tell the full story
Hal Needham, a hurricane scientist at Louisiana State University, wrote in a blog post on the weather site WXshift that a storm’s category doesn’t fully convey how dangerous rainfall could be and how much damage it could cause.
“Hurricanes and tropical storms throw three hazards at us: wind, rainfall, and storm surge,” he wrote. “Think of the impacts separately. Storms with weaker winds are more likely to stall and dump heavier rainfall. This shocks people, as it would seem intuitive that a Category 5 hurricane would tend to dump more rain than a Category 1 hurricane. But the opposite is true.”
While strong winds can rip shingles off roofs and tear down power lines, flooding often causes more widespread, costlier damage — and can be more dangerous for humans. Needham said that the scale used to distinguish a hurricane from a tropical storm was based solely on maximum sustained wind but that “storms are too complex to define by one number.”
How Texas prepared
Hurricane Harvey is President Donald Trump’s ‘first serious’ crisis of his presidency. The White House said in a statement on Friday afternoon that the president is closely monitoring the storm.
Before the hurricane hit, many areas — including Rockport and Port Aransas — issued mandatory evacuation orders. The Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority began busing evacuees to San Antonio on Thursday. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster on Wednesday for 30 counties in Harvey’s path, freeing up state money and resources to respond to the storm. Abbott told the New York Times that his government was preparing to assist up to 41,000 evacuees.
The American Red Cross opened pop-up shelters throughout San Antonio, and the San Antonio Current reported that 6,000 beds were ready there as of Friday morning.
The Health and Human Services Department said it was deploying assets to Texas and Louisiana ahead of Harvey’s landfall, moving six Disaster Medical Assistance Teams to the Dallas area, and Incident Response Coordination Teams to support medical personnel in both states.
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