Beware of Hurricane Harvey

MopTopMike

G45 Legend
Staff member
Joined
Apr 20, 2011
Location
The shores of southern CT
We have some G45 members who live in the direct line of fire from the wrath of hurricane Harvey.
Take care, guys & gals, I'm hoping for the best for you. Having had to deal with S-L-O-W storm water surge during the double barrel attack from Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy, I know the stress and hassle of trying to deal with rising flood waters.
Get those records off the floor / first floor if you can!
 
Glad my vinyl collection isn't stored in Refugio anymore!
Unfortunately my in-laws are, so I hope that they are
taping up all of the windows today.
 
From here it looks like no one could have anticipated the gravity of the situation in Houston and certain other Texan towns. Hope no one here got flooded! A question for those nearby. How are state and federal governments responding to this? Is it anything like the debacle of Katrina?
 
Don Julio...how did you manage down there this week?
My in-laws in Refugio are still on generator power and
they have to drive all the way to Beeville to get in proximity
to a still-standing cell tower so that they can call out on their
phones. Fortunately the house is intact, but all of the trees
are kaput save for two old live oaks. It could have been worse...
 
It could always have been worse. We have gotten help moving out of our flooded house from several buddies that did not flood. I think I might be ready to stop buying records after moving them to our new storage units over the past few days. So goddamned sore!
 
I was going to go into the abysmal neglect suffered by the victims of Katrina, but another point of interest stoked by the article kindly provided by Frantic has saved me from going down that path. When Katrina struck Mississippi I felt there was something odd about it. A gut feeling rather than any conscious apprehension of facts. Likewise for hurricane Sandy some years later. Having just done some research this evening, prompted by something I read in the aforementioned article, I can now put some facts and figures forward in justification of my hunches.

Katrina struck New Orleans as a cat. 3 hurricane, yet it had a barometric pressure which would have been low for a cat. 5 hurricane; in fact, at 920 millibars it was the 3rd lowest pressure on record. A further anomaly was that it only produced 5 - 10 inches of rain. Virtually all the damage was caused by inundation due to breaches in the levee, in turn triggered by the massive storm surge it produced.

Sandy was similarly singular. It struck New Jersey as a cat. 1, yet it had a barometric pressure of 940 millibars which is normal for a cat. 4 or 5, and a record for any hurricane to strike north of Cape Hatteras. Despite its strength and size (2nd largest Atlantic hurricane on record), it only produced 7 inches of rain at landfall. Again, most of the damage was caused by "the highest storm surge ever recorded in the United States". Go figure.
 
Yeah, every storm is unique in it's way and hard to estimate what will be the effect on different locations even comparing atributes via the same metrics. I did not think we would flood but I'm glad I put what I could a little higher up. Found a little tote with some TX grails in it yesterday (wanderers, gentlemen, botumles pit, underground buttons etc) and the paper sleeves had already started to get spots of foxing. Not that they flooded, they were just in the house! So over the race against time trying to empty the (hoarder) house and get the crap to safety! We got over there at 9AM again today and down the street comes a team of volunteers that really saved our bacon! Like 15 fresh bodies ready to get wild on the task at hand. Carpets out, furniture out, drywall out, help with packing -you name it. They even brough hand packed bag lunches! Just wild. Like an old time barn raising or something. Texas style. Really changed my situation! www.instagram.com/eleelandc/ for pix
 
Glad to hear of the community spirit in Texas, eleelandc. All the best with getting back to normal. Botumles Pit, Underground Buttons... Hmmmmm