5 ms·

Hurricanes (or natural disasters) are one in a lifetime event?

r721 9y ago
>During the peak of the flooding on Saturday night, the National Weather Service in Houston issued an apocalyptically worded “Flash Flood Emergency for Life-Threatening Catastrophic Flooding.” That kind of warning wasn’t a thing before Harvey, which just adds emphasis to the unique risk this storm poses. >The event is so rare, that even the NWS is unsure of what will happen next. In a chilling follow-up tweet on Sunday, the NWS said “this event is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced.” http://grist.org/briefly/harvey-dealt-houston-catastrophic-flooding-and-its-not-over-yet/ http://grist.org/briefly/harvey-dealt-houston-catastrophic-f...
- chrisper 9y ago
  Yes, but just because it happened for the first time now it won't happen anytime soon again? Maybe not next year, but really lifetime rare? I think it's better to prepare and it not happening than not prepare because it's just a once in a lifetime thing. They even say it isnt sure what's going to happen next. So you can't say now that it is a once in a lifetime thing.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    In someways isn't this the governments job? It's very easy for people to plan for things that happen every year or two, one of the things the government is capable of doing is looking further ahead than normal people will getting ready for THAT.
rurban 9y ago
This hurricane yes. The last comparable event was the destruction of Galveston in the early 1900ies, which led to the rise of Houston. This is a hurricane with masses of hot mexican golf water, which decided to stop directly behind Houston to unload all the water there, the 3rd largest city in the US, which is huge and totally flat. The rivers are showing record factors of flow, 10x more than the previous flow records. E.g 70.000 cfs in La Grange. The previous record was like 6.000 cfs. You cannot deal with such numbers, but still the dams are holding.
- chrisper 9y ago
  I see. Thanks for providing some context and numbers. Seems to be much larger than I thought. But it could still be that the number of these kinds of hurricanes could go up, no?
  - sndean 9y ago
    It being a cat 4 hurricane was bad enough, but the flooding is largely being caused by the two high pressure systems on either side of Harvey [0][1]. Storms normally aren't held in place for a week straight. So it may be more important to try to understand whether there'll be more storms + surrounding high pressure systems [0] https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/harvey-stall-22aug17.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/harvey-stall-22aug17.j... [1] https://www.wunderground.com/news/tropical-storm-hurricane-harvey-gulf-of-mexico-forecast https://www.wunderground.com/news/tropical-storm-hurricane-h...

r721 9y ago

>During the peak of the flooding on Saturday night, the National Weather Service in Houston issued an apocalyptically worded “Flash Flood Emergency for Life-Threatening Catastrophic Flooding.” That kind of warning wasn’t a thing before Harvey, which just adds emphasis to the unique risk this storm poses. >The event is so rare, that even the NWS is unsure of what will happen next. In a chilling follow-up tweet on Sunday, the NWS said “this event is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced.” http://grist.org/briefly/harvey-dealt-houston-catastrophic-flooding-and-its-not-over-yet/ http://grist.org/briefly/harvey-dealt-houston-catastrophic-f...

chrisper 9y ago
Yes, but just because it happened for the first time now it won't happen anytime soon again? Maybe not next year, but really lifetime rare? I think it's better to prepare and it not happening than not prepare because it's just a once in a lifetime thing. They even say it isnt sure what's going to happen next. So you can't say now that it is a once in a lifetime thing.
- MBCook 9y ago
  In someways isn't this the governments job? It's very easy for people to plan for things that happen every year or two, one of the things the government is capable of doing is looking further ahead than normal people will getting ready for THAT.

rurban 9y ago

This hurricane yes. The last comparable event was the destruction of Galveston in the early 1900ies, which led to the rise of Houston. This is a hurricane with masses of hot mexican golf water, which decided to stop directly behind Houston to unload all the water there, the 3rd largest city in the US, which is huge and totally flat. The rivers are showing record factors of flow, 10x more than the previous flow records. E.g 70.000 cfs in La Grange. The previous record was like 6.000 cfs. You cannot deal with such numbers, but still the dams are holding.

chrisper 9y ago
I see. Thanks for providing some context and numbers. Seems to be much larger than I thought. But it could still be that the number of these kinds of hurricanes could go up, no?
- sndean 9y ago
  It being a cat 4 hurricane was bad enough, but the flooding is largely being caused by the two high pressure systems on either side of Harvey [0][1]. Storms normally aren't held in place for a week straight. So it may be more important to try to understand whether there'll be more storms + surrounding high pressure systems [0] https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/harvey-stall-22aug17.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/harvey-stall-22aug17.j... [1] https://www.wunderground.com/news/tropical-storm-hurricane-harvey-gulf-of-mexico-forecast https://www.wunderground.com/news/tropical-storm-hurricane-h...