Is The End Of The Rain In Sight? Maybe —

At about 10:30 PM CDT, we just heard an announcement on KHOU-TV that part of the band of heavy rain coming northeast from the coast and passing through Houston (causing some flooding), specifically the trailing edge,  is now visible on radar, possibly 2½‑3‑3½ hours away from Houston. That means there should be an end... sooner than initially expected... to the flooding. So far, the street in front of Our House is not flooded across, and is passable in any but the shallowest vehicle, though I'd prefer not to drive it right now. This may pass us with less damage than we feared. I'll let you know when I know something more myself.

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UPDATE sometime after midnight: even the hours mentioned above may not be soon enough at the rate some areas in the central part of the county are flooding. I'm still hoping for good luck at Our House, and what I see out the window bears out my hope. More as it happens.

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UN-UPDATE: OK. Great. TV stations KHOU and KPRC have recently given quite different versions of what is expected in the next few hours. Maybe this "weather forecasting" thingy is not quite what it's cracked up to be. In any case, I'm going to quit letting their conflicting reports make a fool of me, at least on this one issue... apologies for the confusion, which is obviously not mine alone.

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UPDATE: about 11:15 AM Sunday. The rain has stopped at our location, except for occasional very light, sparse showers. Some other parts of the city got some flooding; I'll leave that to the media to report. Our lawn never got even grass-deep in water, the back patio never had standing water on it, and I don't believe any neighborhood critters (outdoor, whether wild or pet) would have had any trouble surviving. There could always be more weather today, or, Dog forbid, another storm... That's it for me regarding Patricia. What a boring but tense 48 hours!

Hurricane Patricia Most Powerful Ever; Not A Wind Event For Houston But Flooding Dangers Are Real Enough

Hurricane Patricia, approaching the Pacific coast of Mexico with possible catastrophic results there and the possibility of dangerous winds on the Texas coast and rain events tracking northeast across Texas and other states, is the most powerful weather events ever recorded. Right now, Friday at about 5:00PM Central time, it is a category 5 hurricane, the highest possible on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with current winds of... get this... 190 mph with gusts to 240 mph (that's tornado-like, said one meteorologist) and comparably low barometric pressures measured at the center (by dropped barometers, not aircraft, thank goodness). [UPDATE from Weather Underground: "At 2:30 pm Friday afternoon, October 23, 2015, a NOAA hurricane hunter aircraft measured a central pressure of 879 mb--the lowest pressure ever measured in a hurricane in the Western Hemisphere." Wow.]

That said, I hope you can set your mind at ease about our hazards from this awesome, awful storm: long before it reaches us, for example 1:00AM CT Sunday just prior to its reaching the Mexico-Texas border, winds will probably be 35-40 mph... not even quite tropical storm level. (See map above for forecast extent of tropical storm winds.) That's according to KHOU-TV, which still guests well-known retired meteorologist and acknowledged hurricane expert Dr. Neal Frank and employs several other very respectable younger meteorologists also with tropical expertise and experience.

The rainfall could be a very different matter. Houston's bayous have been successfully engineered over more than 50 years to cope with rains as high as 8" per hour and may... may... be able to withstand as high as 12" per hour in many parts of the city. But the forecast for this event? Between 11" and 15" per hour at its peak. Why such a wide range of possibilities? Well, for one thing, we're talking about tropical rain and South Texas topography here; it's not that easy to forecast in the best of circumstances. For another thing, Houston is a gigantic, spread-out city; people who talk about the "eight-county metropolitan area" are not speaking just metaphorically. Houston is huge. Worse still, its topography is highly diverse... it won't do to forecast one rainfall rate for the whole city because it doesn't work that way.

Of course I'll continue to post as long as we have power, which may be straight through the event... or not. We have food, water, a fairly elevated location within the city, a house that has survived several hurricanes of categories 1 through 3 over the years, a deep and well-engineered bayou near enough to absorb considerable runoff and far enough that we won't flood just by its proximity. As for gasoline, I'm determined neither of us will use any; the city's orders are for citizens NOT to evacuate but to stay home. Those of you who live along coasts know the drill; those of you who live where other kinds of severe storms occur can at least conceive of it.

I'll let you know what we experience. If we lose power and can't use the usual web interface, I can use a cell phone to post a line or two on this blog... ugly but functional. Or maybe Stella will lend me her iPad for a half hour...

Stay safe and dry, my friends. My prayers for the folks in Mexico who are choosing to stay in Patricia's path.

(I have made several post-posting corrections. - SB)

O Danny — Oy!

Is Texas liable to be affected by Hurricane Danny? Well, the short answer is...

... it's too soon to tell. Conditions are currently favorable for development, but it's somewhat fragile; quick, small changes in conditions could easily weaken or redirect it. By midweek or so we should have a better idea.

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UPDATE: the 2:00PM AST update from a hurricane hunter aircraft shows a considerably stronger storm (Category 3), but apparently it is entering unfavorable conditions and is not expected to stay strong. Keep your eyes open if this may affect you. We're already long since stocked for a hurricane, so there's not much more for us to do except watch this truly odd storm as it progresses.

Here is Dr. Jeff Masters with something useful (as usual!):

Track models remain in fairly good agreement on a continued west-northwest track for Danny. The NHC forecast track (see Figure 3) now brings Danny to the vicinity of Puerto Rico by Tuesday and Hispanola by Wednesday. Assuming the west-northwest bearing remains solid, only a slight deviation could play a big role in Danny’s future, as interaction with the mountainous terrain of these islands could quickly disrupt weaken a storm as small as Danny. If the model trend further toward the north continues, Danny has a better chance of escaping landfall on the islands; in this case, its small size could actually result in less disruption from the islands than for a larger hurricane.

See the associated map at the "Dr. Jeff Masters" link above.

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UPDATE Sunday about 8:15AM CDT: call Danny "The Storm that will Not Go Away"; call it that and read Dr. Masters. Danny is weakening as predicted, but is still well-defined and on track.

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UPDATE Monday morning: Danny weakens to a tropical depression. Some rain is expected. Unless Danny cranks up again, this is my last note on it.

The ‘Bill’ That Still Isn't Paid

Tropical Depression Bill has mostly cleared the Houston area (mostly but not completely, if you care about the flooding!), but is still making trouble with flash floods and local river rises "from Oklahoma to Illinois through Friday[.]" Some weather just won't quit; click for map from about 4:58AM CT today.

This is liable to be a very expensive storm, in damage done, misery of displaced families who lost their homes, and (fortunately few) deaths. And I can't help noticing what a great portion of the US has been affected. I hope this is not the new normal, but I'm afraid it may be.

Flood Gauges In Houston-Harris County Look Good; Surrounding Areas Not So Much

Take a look for yourself. Of course, what looks good and what doesn't may have changed by the time you view the page.

The "hgx" param in the URL names the initial central radar area, in this case, Houston/Galveston, TX (HGX). Once the map opens (which takes a while), you can manually choose an adjacent radar area.

I never knew this resource was available, but since I live in Flood City USA, I suspect I'll be using it again. (Actually I suppose NOLA is Flood City USA. [/sigh].)

More Rain

No, not the stuff at the foot of a glacier, just drear, dark drizzle, so far this morning less than 5 minutes of downpour. NWS promises us 100% chance of (heavy) rain, and we've had small amounts, but nothing to strain the street-and-bayou drainage system. If this keeps up, I may get bored enough to resume writing about (gasp) politics before the day is over! But in matters of tropical weather, boring is good...

Here We Go... UPDATED

BOHICA! Yes, "again," a mere three weeks since the last flood-inducing storm... the serious rain is forecast to begin at 4:00 A.M. Wish us luck...

UPDATE Tues. about 8:00 AM CT: finally the rain arrived, just a few minutes ago. T.S. Bill is wide, extending about 150 miles west and 150 miles east along the coast from the center landfall (approximately now) at Matagorda. In that respect only, Bill reminds me of Hurricane Ike. Stella is toying with the idea of going to work (the roads are clear at the moment but who knows about this evening) and I am toying with the idea of finding a rope and tying her down (no, we're not into that sort of thing; I just don't want to see her stranded at her place of employment [which, damn it, has announced it will be open for business]) for TWO DAYS, which is the forecast duration of the potentially flooding rain.

UPDATE Tues. about 3:30 PM CT: at Our House in Houston, there's still no severe weather, very little rain and no flooding at all. Those who live in other parts of the city may have other experiences, perhaps even including tornadoes. This doesn't mean Bill has given us a miss: once the storm center is well onshore beyond Matagorda, we expect bands of rain, possibly training one after another, each brief and intense with short breaks in between, for more than 24 hours. Will we flood? Don't know; stay tuned.

The kitties are rather nervous, and Stella is even more so... she became so annoyed watching the continuous storm coverage on local broadcast TV (overall excellent IMHO) that she took to watching classic TV. I really need to see the end of this storm!

‘A Little Ray Of Sunshine’

That describes neither of us humans in this house, and neither of the cats. But we did see that little ray this morning, for a few minutes just before it up-and-poured rain at a rate that looked liable to flood the patio within minutes. That wasn't supposed to happen until late this afternoon; I was worried. But the intense rain stopped in about a half hour, and the ground here at Our House is not really saturated yet... it has been drying out since Memorial Day. So we're not flooded yet, and moments ago we had Another Little Ray of Sunshine. The TV meteorologists have succeeded in scaring the crap out of me about the approaching weather, but my reaction at the moment is that no one told me that a major symptom of global climate change would be truly weird, erratic weather.

Something's fishy in chair and weather
(too bad our chairs are not this whimsical)

Welcome to our age; please take a chair, a patio or lawn chair. Take it into the garage, so it won't blow away or float away...

Soon We May Be Having Weather

It's pleasant and sunny in Houston at the moment, but if I disappear for a few days, you may want to look at more recent stories about what is now Invest 91‑L. Our main worry if we do get a hurricane is not the wind... this house has withstood everything Mother Nature has blown at it over the past couple of decades... but the water. The ground has not exactly dried out from those floods we had a week or two ago.

I'll try to post for as long as we have power and a 'net connection, and may put up one of those text-only email posts from my cell phone even if we don't.

QuikSCAT's Replacement, RapidScat, Arrives At International Space Station, Will Resume Hurricane Forecasting Capabilities Much Missed Since QuikSCAT's 2009 Demise

Dr. Jeff Masters at Weather Underground tells us about RapidScat. This one is worth reading in its (relatively short) entirety. Here are some of the basics, from a post on Dr. Masters's blog yesterday:

In November 2009, one of the greatest success stories in the history of satellite meteorology came to an end when the venerable QuikSCAT satellite failed. Launched in 1999, the QuikSCAT satellite became one of the most useful and controversial meteorological satellites ever to orbit the Earth. It carried a scatterometer--a radar instrument that can measure near-surface wind speed and direction over the ocean. ... A QuikSCAT replacement called ISS-RapidScat was funded in 2012 and built in just 18 months. RapidScat was successfully launched on September 20, 2014 on a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft, which docked last week with the International Space Station (ISS.) This morning, RapidScat was plucked out of the Dragon and install it on the Space Station. The heaters have been turned on, and full activation of RapidScat is expected on Wednesday. In a clever reuse of hardware originally built to test parts of NASA's QuikScat satellite, RapidScat cost NASA just $30 million--80% lower than if the instrument had been built new.

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Wednesday... that's today! And according to Masters's article, it has been installed.

QuikSCAT lasted 10 years, well beyond its expected lifetime of 3 years, and was much appreciated by those of us who live in hurricane‑affected areas, for whom early and accurate forecasts are the key to preparation and thus to human survival and, where possible, avoidance of large-scale storm damage. It's been a scary few years without QuikSCAT; RapidScat, though its virtues and limitations are different, is a welcome replacement.

Please note that this is one of the first serious practical missions using a privately developed SpaceX spacecraft, which is, to put it bluntly, all America has in the way of launch capability now that the Space Shuttle has retired. Even putting aside a projected Mars mission in a few years, everyone will benefit from the availability of these craft. And considering the cost saving in delivering RapidScat to the ISS, surely even Republicans could learn to love SpaceX, with its ever-developing expertise in automated space technology.

It's Baa-ack! Hurricane Season Is Upon Us

T.S. Alvin is southwest of the southwest coast of Mexico, heading west-northwest and not threatening anyone on land. But it's two weeks early for the traditional June 1 start of hurricane season, and Alvin is a reminder to all of us along the Gulf Coast to check our stocks of food, batteries, etc. Don't be caught without the essentials!

Sandy Advances, Campaigns Make Adjustments

Read here and here. The Rmoney campaign canceled some events “out of sensitivity for the millions of Americans in the path of Hurricane Sandy” (yes, I can believe Rmoney canceled events because he was out of sensitivity; that's been evident for days) and the Obama campaign pared back its campaign activities because, um, a president has some, y'know, like, actual duties when a natural disaster strikes America. There is some speculation that Sandy will disrupt actual voting, but there's no way of knowing yet; storms are not in the habit of sending mere humans maps of their planned course. The best forecasts come from the National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center (link is to the Sandy page), and that's where I suggest you keep track.

Hurricane Isaac Floods Homes Near New Orleans

Isaac is part of a new type of hurricane, a type that we've seen only in the past few years which does its damage not with wind but with water. When I read the NHC site a half hour ago, top winds were only 70kt (80mph)... a category 1 hurricane... and not a very strong one at that.

But Isaac's span of coastline is huge, and its motion is slow, when it moves at all. That means two things: massive storm surge and overwhelming flooding. From NBC News:

Updated at 11 a.m. ET: New Orleans' levees and pumps were holding up to the rain and storm surge caused by Hurricane Isaac, but areas outside the defense network saw flooding, including an 18-mile stretch to the south where up to 12 feet of water invaded streets and homes.

Officials in Plaquemines Parish, where the surge overtopped an 8-foot levee, said National Guardsmen and even residents were trying to rescue people trapped in homes. Up to 60 people appear to be trapped, NBC's Gabe Gutierrez reported from the area. Rescuers earlier pulled several dozen to safety.

"We have flooding, inundated four-to-nine feet in areas on that side" of the levee, parish emergency management official Guy Laigast told the Weather Channel. "We've got homes that have been inundated. We have folks who are trapped in their residences."

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My heart goes out to those people. We coast-dwellers build in areas vulnerable to storm surge for very persuasive economic reasons and recreational convenience, but once in a while, we pay the price. My expectation is that the phenomenon "it's the water, not the wind" will prevail more and more often in the near future. Look for "storm surge exceedance" among the products on the NHS site.

Ernesto Continues To Defy Forecasters

As of this writing, it looks about the same as it did a couple of days ago (for current info, see this page). Forecasters, unlike politicians, are willing to tell you when they're just making stuff up based on inadequate information, and that's exactly what they're doing regarding Ernesto. The models are all over the place; the forecast aims the storm well south of me, perhaps near the Texas-Mexico border. I may get a storm this week; I may not. Stay tuned.

Debby Does... Tampa?

That (expletive deleted) storm is still in about the same place as last night, still stationary, spawning at least 20 tornadoes and dumping bathtubs-full of rain on the Tampa Bay area. This quote from Dr. Jeff Masters this morning caught my attention:

... The heaviest rains of Debby affected the Tampa Bay region, where over ten inches were reported at several locations. The Tampa Bay airport picked up 7.11 inches on Sunday. It's a good thing this isn't the week of the Republican National Convention, which is scheduled for late August in Tampa! Minor to moderate flooding is occurring at three rivers near Tampa, and flooding has been limited by the fact the region is under moderate to severe drought.

Dr. Masters never, as far as I know, mentions politics on his weather blog, but it seems to me that Mother Nature herself is pointing the finger at the party most responsible for so many mortgages underwater...

Tropical Storm Debby

Debby has been established as a tropical storm. The current forecast says that "a tropical storm warning is in effect for the coast of Louisiana from the mouth of the Pearl River westward to Morgan City, not including the city of New Orleans or Lake Pontchartrain" but please note that the storm is projected to make a sharp turn left (West) before landfall and head, with the center over water, toward the south Texas coast after landfall. Houstonians, pay attention; we're not directly in the forecast path, but if Debby survives its initial Louisiana landfall, we're not out of harm's way yet either.

Sources: National Hurricane Center; Weather Underground.

UPDATE Sun. morning 6/24 about 8:10am: the strong (northeast) side of Debby is forecast to hit the Florida panhandle and the Mississippi/Alabama coastline; it may be doing that now. And Louisiana is still under a warning. With a radius of 200 mi, Debby can do all this with the center still over water in its approximately due-westward track, and I think it may visit Houston about next weekend, possibly as a Cat. 1 hurricane. But don't take my word for it; use those links above.

UPDATE Sun. morning 6/24 about 8:45 am: now the Houston Chronicle's SciGuy (Eric Berger) says, "The official forecast understates the shift in the models, most of which are now bringing Debby to the northern Gulf coast. (Here’s the latest European model, for example, which yesterday brought Debby into Texas near Matagorda Bay. It now targets central Louisiana)." Maybe it won't come here after all. ADDED: Berger's "Models Map" shows an increasing consensus among the models of a landfall in southeastern Louisiana. Yes, he says, there is potential danger of flooding in New Orleans, not from storm surge but from heavy rainfall overwhelming the city's pumping system.

UPDATE Sun. afternoon 6/24 about 5:00 pm: Here's Bryan of Why Now?, writing from the Florida panhandle:

The 4PM update shows a totally new track forecast with Apalachicola as the new target. The Warning for Louisiana has been discontinued. From the local wind I knew that the storm was to the East of my location, but it is moving slowly, indicating weak steering, so anything is still possible. The slow movement also impedes strengthening as cooler water is pulled to the surface which reduces available energy.

And so it goes northward into Florida... unless something changes again. Hellooo, climate change denialists... are you ready to surrender yet?