[Noon Friday] Hurricane Harvey Continuing to Strengthen as it Approaches Texas; Landfall Tonight
Latest Advisory from the National Hurricane Center
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Comments
We are sheltering in place in Victoria. The majority of the town has done the same. Aside from the presumed long-term loss of utilities, how much danger are we in?
Victoria is inland from the ocean but you will be right in the heaviest rainfall and potential for flash flooding. Very strong winds of hurricane force could occur that far inland as well. How prone your location is to flooding or wind damage is highly dependent on the characteristics of your property, so I couldn’t tell you. If you’re prepared and stocked up properly, hopefully you’ll be able to ride it out without significant problems. Of course, expect to lose power, potentially for a long time. Flooding will threaten the region for several days, and emergency responders could be unable to reach the area during that time. Stay safe!
You are putting yourself and first-responders at risk. You are facing significant storm surge in addition to over 20″ of rain.
You are in plenty of danger. Some predictions have Victoria receiving 25-30 inches of rain which would be catastrophic. Just because you are not on the coast doesn’t mean you aren’t in danger.
The latest GFS model run stalls the storm over Texas for the next 9 days. Of course, that might not happen, but last year Matthew gave us, at my house, 15 inches of rain in 12 hours well inland in eastern North Carolina. Some towns were cut off for over a week by the massive flooding that came from 20 inches of rain around them.
You face the potential of far more rain than we got. I hope you have 2 weeks of food and water stored up and 2 weeks of gasoline for your generator.
God bless you. Good luck.
Be on watch for tornadoes before the storm comes ashore. Doppler radar shows large amounts of rotation in the thunderstorms in the rain bands headed your way. This type of tornadoes forms quickly and moves rapidly so they are very hard to see coming.
The tornado paths that saw today (in the northeast quadrant of Harvey) moved towards the west or southwest, whereas I believe the most ordinary tornado paths moves towards the east or northeast.
If that’s true (??) why the difference in path direction?
@stan chaz – yes it is true that most tornados move in an easterly direction (east, northeast, southeast) and sometimes north – when associated with supercell thunderstorms because those storms are driven forward by the steering currents in the jet stream and will tend to move with those steering currents or will often turn toward the right (for example, in southwest flow aloft, the storm will first move northeast and then tend to turn to the right, or east and then southeast). In a hurricane, the motion of a tornado is driven by the rotation of the hurricane itself. The hurricane is rotating counterclockwise, so in the northeast quadrant (where most tornados form) the bands of the hurricane can be seen rotating generally from southeast to northwest, and any tornado forming within those bands is going to also move in that direction.
That simply has to do with the trajectory of the storms. In the case of a hirricane, they move counter clockwise about the eye. A typical supercell, a common tornado spawning storm, tends to move from SW to NE.
Corpus Christi & Victoria are basically one in the same in the landfalling area. Harvey is intensifying.
Levi,
Huge fan of what you do love your entire webpage with all the links to awesome data as well. Last year when Matthew hit Central Florida many of us waited for your updates over all the other sources out there. You have a great way of explaining things that are very complicated into terms amateur meteorologists can understand.Thanks again keep up the great work.
What effect will Harvey have on the Brazoria-Churchill area? Also, Freeport? I have family who lives there.
Looks like it’s slowing down or stalling now…
NHC just said Cat 4.
Very bad.
http://weather.cod.edu/satrad/nexrad/index.php?type=CRP-N0Q-1-200#
Will Harvey come to Houston as a major hurricane? Does model guidance say that?
At this point that is not expected, as Harvey is expected to move ashore in southern Texas and weaken considerably, so even if it emerges back over water for a time and moves closer to Houston, it would be much weaker. However, the greatest threat to Houston is not the wind anyway, but the flooding.
Will you be posting any commentary tonite?
How come the western side of the storm was the worst side of the storm, as depicted on sat and radar.
Any reports of major damage inland yet? I have concerns for family homes in the area.
We are hearing of major damage in Rockport / Fulton area. The high school has collapsed, several other building have major damage. This is what is being reported on San Antonio news.
Do you think the hurricane winds will make it to San Antonio?
Is Corpus Christi all right for the most part? Was the city spared? I have family that lives there.
The storm surge spared Corpus Christi and they missed the worst of the winds. The problem now is that rain and flooding will continue for days. The rainfall amounts are very hard to predict as the storm slowly meanders for days across coastal Texas. The ECMWF & GFS models agree about the storm stalling but they predict different storm tracks.
It is too early to predict the details of the floods to come.
The storm surge spared Corpus Christi and they missed the worst of the winds. The problem now is that rain and flooding will continue for days. The rainfall amounts are very hard to predict as the storm slowly meanders for days across coastal Texas. The ECMWF & GFS models agree about the storm stalling but they predict different storm tracks.
It is too early to predict the details of the floods to come but this is one of the ugliest flooding situations I have seen developing since Hurricane Mitch.
Ok. I have a question.
Apparently the Air Force declared Harvey a CAT IV during their last mission before land fall.
It is my understanding that the hurricane hunters measure the wind speed at the altitude they’re flying at and then interpolate what the wind speeds would be at lower altitudes. The sensors they drop cannot measure sustained (1 minute) wind speed at any altitude because they drop too fast.
I have yet to see data from any near shore buoy or surface station which shows one minute of sustained winds of 130 mph as measured 33′ above the surface level anywhere. Yet everyone is still saying this was a Cat IV at landfall. Why?