More Harvey

Yahoo has a Reuters article by Brian Thevenot about the hurricane:

The most powerful storm to hit Texas in more than fifty years has killed at least one person and is now threatening catastrophic flooding, as search and rescue teams deploy to the hardest-hit zones, authorities said on Saturday.
Harvey hit Texas, the heart of the American oil and gas industry, late Friday as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 130 miles per hour, making it the strongest storm to strike the state since 1961.
The storm has ripped off roofs, snapped powerlines, and triggered tornadoes and flash floods, while also curtailing a large portion of America's oil and fuel production and prompting price hikes at the pumps.
It has since weakened to a tropical storm, but is expected to lash Texas for days as it lumbers inland, bringing as much as forty inches of rain, affecting heavily populated areas like Houston. Texas utility companies, meanwhile, said nearly a quarter of a million customers were without power.
One person died in a house fire in the town of Rockport, thirty miles north of the city of Corpus Christi, as Harvey roared ashore overnight, Mayor Charles Wax said in a news conference on Saturday, marking the first confirmed fatality from the storm.
Across Rockport, which took a direct hit from the storm, the streets were flooded and strewn with power lines and debris. At a recreational vehicle sales lot, a dozen vehicles were flipped over and one had been blown into the middle of the street.
"It was terrible," resident Joel Valdez, 57, told Reuters. The storm ripped part of the roof from his trailer home at around 4 a.m., he said. "I could feel the whole house move."
Valdez said he stayed through the storm to look after his animals. "I have these miniature donkeys and I don't know where they are," he said, as he sat in a Jeep with windows smashed by the storm.
Resident Frank Cook, 56, also stayed through the storm. "If you have something left of your house, you're lucky," he said, surveying the damage from his vehicle.
Before the storm hit, Rockport's mayor told anyone staying behind to write their names on their arms for identification in case of death or injury. A high school, a hotel, a senior housing complex, and other buildings suffered structural damage, according to emergency officials and local media. Some were being used as shelters.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on Saturday that he would activate eighteen hundred members of the military to help with the statewide cleanup, while a thousand people would conduct search-and-rescue operations.
The streets of Corpus Christi, which has around three hundred thousand residents, were deserted on Saturday, with billboards twisted and strong winds still blowing. Authorities asked residents to reduce use of toilets and faucets because power outages left waste water plants unable to treat sewage.
A drill ship broke free of its mooring overnight and rammed into some tugs in the port of Corpus Christi, port executive Sean Strawbridge said. The crews on the tugs were safe, he added. The city was under voluntary evacuation ahead of the storm.
Harvey was a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale when it hit the coast, the second-highest category, and the most powerful storm in over a decade to come ashore anywhere in the mainland United States.
Harvey weakened to a tropical storm from hurricane strength on Saturday, the National Hurricane Center said. The center of the storm was about sixty miles east-southeast of San Antonio with sustained winds of 65 mph and barely moving, the center said.
Houston, the fourth most populous city in the United States and home to a third of the six million people that could be impacted by Harvey, has gotten about sixteen inches of rain so far, and will receive two to three more feet in the coming days, Mayor Sylvester Turner said on Saturday afternoon. "This is serious," Turner said in a televised interview as Harvey turned into a tropical storm expected to linger over the mid-Texas coast. "It is important that people stay off the roads." Turner said the city, which has faced flooding in recent years during smaller storms, is prepared for what he described as a "major water event." Other authorities warned of the potentially life-threatening impact of heavy rains between Houston and Corpus Christi over the next several days. The latest forecast storm track has Harvey looping back toward the Gulf of Mexico coast before turning north again on Tuesday. "This rain will lead to a prolonged, dangerous, and potentially catastrophic flooding event well into next week," the National Weather Service said. Harvey has triggered flash floods, it said.
The size and strength of Harvey dredged up memories of Katrina, the 2005 hurricane that made a direct hit on New Orleans, Louisiana as a Category 3 storm, causing levees and flood walls to fail in dozens of places. About eighteen hundred people died in the disaster, made worse by a slow government emergency response.
President Donald Trump, facing the first big natural disaster of his term, signed a disaster proclamation on Friday. He met with his cabinet and staff on Saturday to discuss the Federal reaction to the storm, according to a White House statement. "President Trump emphasized his expectations that all departments and agencies stay fully engaged and positioned to support his number one priority of saving lives," according to the statement.
Utilities American Electric Power Company Inc. and CenterPoint Energy Inc. reported a combined total of around a quarter-million customers without power. Several refiners shut down plants ahead of the storm, disrupting supplies and pushing prices higher. Many fuel stations ran out of gasoline before the storm hit, and the Environmental Protection Agency loosened gasoline specifications late on Friday to reduce shortages.
The American Automobile Association said pump prices rose four cents in four days in Texas to $2.17 a gallon on Friday. Disruptions to fuel supply drove benchmark gasoline futures to their highest price in four months.
More than forty-five percent of the country's refining capacity is along the Gulf Coast, and nearly a fifth of the nation's crude is produced offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
Just under a quarter of Gulf output, a half-million barrels per day, had been shut in by the storm, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said on Saturday.

Water gushed Monday from Houston-area reservoirs overwhelmed by Harvey, as authorities sought to release pressure on two dams that were at risk of failing from the immense floodwaters that have filled the city.
The move aimed at protecting the downtown business district risked flooding thousands more homes, and the nation's fourth-largest city expected to get still more rain after a chaotic weekend of rain, rising water, and rescues.
Meanwhile, authorities continued plucking people from the floodwaters; at least two thousand so far, according to Police Chief Art Acevedo. At least 185 critical rescue requests were still pending on Monday morning. The goal is to rescue those people by the end of the day, Acevedo said. With rain falling unabated, he said there was nowhere left for the water to drain. "I'm not sure where the water is going because it's just so much that we can't really absorb more in the ground at this point," he told MSNBC's Morning Joe.
Harvey, which made landfall Friday as a Category 4 hurricane and then lingered just off the coast as a drenching tropical storm, sent devastating floods pouring into Houston on Sunday. The rising water forced a mass evacuation of parts of the city and overwhelmed rescuers who could not keep up with constant calls for help.
As many as fifty counties are affected by the flooding, Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Brock Long said Monday. The rain and floods have been blamed for at least two deaths.
Emergency vehicles made up most of the traffic Monday in downtown Houston. The normally bustling business district was virtually deserted. Many traffic signals did not work and most businesses were closed.
Residents living near the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, created to prevent flooding in downtown Houston, were warned Sunday that a controlled release would cause additional street flooding that could spill into homes. The rising water and continuing rain put pressure on the dams, which could fail if the pressure is not relieved.
Harris and Fort Bend county officials advised residents to pack their cars Sunday night and leave in the morning. "When the sun comes up, get out," said Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist for the Harris County Flood Control District. "You don't have to go far, you just need to get out of this area."
The Red Cross quickly set up Houston's George R. Brown Convention Center and other venues as shelters. The convention center was also used as a shelter for Katrina refugees in 2005. By Monday morning, it had already reached half its capacity.
More than 2,600 people had taken shelter there, said Ken Sandy, a shelter manager for the American Red Cross, who estimated that the convention center can accommodate roughly five thousand people, although Sandy cautioned that the shelter had run out of cots and was waiting for more to arrive.
The Army Corps of Engineers started the reservoir releases before 0200 on Monday, ahead of schedule, because water levels were increasing at a rate of more than six inches per hour, Corps spokesman Jay Townsend said.
Officials in suburban Fort Bend County issued mandatory evacuation orders late Sunday along the Brazos River levee districts, as the river rose to major flood stage. The National Weather Service predicted that the water could rise to sixty feet, three feet above 2016 records and what County Judge Robert Herbert called an "eight-hundred-year flood level." That much water would top the levees and carries a threat of levee failure, Herbert said.
On Sunday, incessant rain covered much of Houston in turbid, gray-green water and turned streets into rivers navigable only by boat. In a rescue effort that recalled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, helicopters landed near flooded freeways, airboats buzzed across submerged neighborhoods, and high-water vehicles plowed through water-logged intersections. Some people managed with kayaks or canoes or swam.
Volunteers joined emergency teams in pulling people from their homes or from the water. Authorities urged people to get on top of their houses to avoid becoming trapped in attics and to wave sheets or towels to draw attention to their location.
Long predicted that the aftermath of the storm would require FEMA's involvement for years. "This disaster's going to be a landmark event," he said Sunday.
The weather service warned that the flooding will get worse in the days ahead and that the floodwaters will be slow to recede once Harvey finally moves on.
Up to twenty inches of rain could fall in the coming days, on top of the more than thirtty inches some places have already seen, weather service Director Louis Uccellini said.
Rescuers were giving priority to life-and-death situations, leaving many affected families to fend for themselves. Several hospitals in the Houston area were evacuated due to the rising waters.
Some people used inflatable beach toys, rubber rafts, and even air mattresses to get through the water to safety. Others waded while carrying trash bags stuffed with their belongings and small animals in picnic coolers. Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner urged drivers to stay off the roads.
The deteriorating situation was bound to provoke questions about the conflicting advice given by the governor and Houston leaders before the hurricane. Governor Greg Abbott urged people to flee from Harvey's path, but the Houston mayor issued no evacuation orders and told everyone to stay home. The governor refused to point fingers on Sunday.
"Now is not the time to second-guess decisions that were made," Abbott, a Republican, said at a news conference in Austin. "What's important is that everybody work together to ensure that we are going to, first, save lives and, second, help people across the state rebuild."
The mayor, a Democrat, defended his decision, citing the risk of sending the city's 2.3 million inhabitants onto the highways at the same time. "If you think the situation right now is bad, and you give an order to evacuate, you are creating a nightmare," Turner said.
The Coast Guard deployed five helicopters and asked for additional aircraft from New Orleans, Louisiana.
The White House said President Donald Trump would visit Texas on Tuesday, accompanied by first lady Melania Trump.
Harvey was the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in thirteen years and the strongest to strike Texas since 1961's Hurricane Carla, the most powerful Texas hurricane on record.

For a graphic on Harvey, click here.

Rico says it's gonna suck to be in Texas for awhile... (And his father, who visited while on a Naval Academy cruise, always used to say 'Christ, I'm glad I'm not in Corpus...)