Friday, August 25, 2017 – Snarky Friday is Hunkered Down for Harvey

Harvey went from a Texas size rain storm to an extremely dangerous situation and potentially catastrophic disaster in a matter of hours. This displays how volatile these storms can be. If this is your first hurricane, pay attention and do not take the warnings lightly. Do what you are told to do. Native Texans (and those who got here as quickly as they could) who live on or near the coast, you know what to do, so do it. Hopefully, you started yesterday.

Here is what the entire Texas Gulf Coast and inland as far as Austin and San Antonio are bracing for this weekend and into next week:

Rainfall totals as high as 30 inches in some areas;
storm surges of six to twelve feet;
waves of over 30 feet;
flooding of streams and rivers;
tornados;
loss of power for days or weeks;
interruption of services for days or weeks and
damage to and loss of life and property estimated into the billions of dollars.

That is just a start of the possible scenarios. Landfall is expected tonight near Corpus Christi and Port O’Conner in the darkness. Darkness makes these storms even more frightening. In case you do not know, the Port of Corpus Christi is the largest exporter of crude oil in the world. This is not to lessen the concerns over the Houston Ship Channel and the oil and gas refineries that lie along the coast from Houston to Beaumont.

Every coastal resident has their memories of the big hurricanes that slammed into their homes, businesses and lives. When you grow up in the Houston area and the weather people make comparisons to the following storms, you know Harvey could be bad. Here are just of few of my hurricane memories.

September 11, 1961 – Carla – Houston/Galveston. Very scared. Almost the entire town of Magnolia moved into the high school because it was the only brick building in town. Unbelievable winds. It rained horizontally. Never saw anything like it before.

August 8, 1983 – Alecia – Galveston and up Interstate 45 and into East Texas. The pine trees were falling all over the place in all four directions.

June 5, 2001 – Allison – Houston. This was the storm that flooded the Texas Medical Center, The Alley Theatre and broke all the windows in the sky scrapers in downtown Houston. This is the one, RL, that all of the TIF millions of dollars’ worth of telecommunications equipment funded to the Medical Center were destroyed when their research labs flooded. I still have nightmares from the video conference we had with the people from the various hospitals. Remember when the head of one of the big hospitals said “You do not want to know what floated out of those labs and into the streets of Houston. Telecommunications equipment is the least of our concern at the moment.” I thought we were all going to faint. It still makes me feel faint.

September 24, 2005 – Rita – Texas/Louisiana border. Water. Deep water. Disaster to the max.

September 13, 2008 – Ike – Galveston. Deeper water. No power for weeks. Indescribable.

I hope you are hunkered down and prepared for Harvey. Sometimes names of hurricanes are retired and never used again. Retired storms names are dependent upon the dollar amounts of damage done. Harvey is already being discussed as a possible retired name.

Keep first responders and all of the others risking their lives to ensure our safety in your thoughts and prayers.

Take care of yourself. Take care of others. And God Bless Texas.