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Author Topic: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?  (Read 1700 times)

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Debbie K

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Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« on: August 27, 2017, 04:11:36 PM »

Our local weather forecast

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hummingbirdstones

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #1 on: August 27, 2017, 04:51:44 PM »

Dang, Debbie.  Hope you're on high ground and the flooding isn't too severe.  Stay safe. 
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Robin

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2017, 05:13:11 PM »

I have seen worse out here and unfortunately with similar results. I have also seen 40 days of rain in a row numerous times with constant landslides. Houston  and Galveston had the most dangerous in America by far before modern weather forecasting with many thousands dead in major storms.Our low pressures in winter do not get much press because after all Oregon and Washington are barely America nowadays but  we live through similar events  and they are hell. I just got a 16 kilowatt on demand generator with a thousand gallon propane tank to fuel it and unless a tsunami ( yes we have tsunami warning signs allover ) washes it away  we will have power this winter finally.Real heartbreak down there  and many poor people will never recover their lifestyle.Tragic.
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Debbie K

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #3 on: August 27, 2017, 06:00:28 PM »

This isn't my first rodeo, so to speak. I'm a native and went thru Carla and after that other hurricanes are minor. But the flooding is a different matter entirely. I live about 1/2 miles from a major bayou, but that isn't what's posing the problem. We've had about 27 inches of rain where I am and there's no way that much water drains quickly on relatively flat land. My house is 67 years old and has never flooded (a rarity in Houston) and the water came up to an inch away from my house. My neighbors are flooding across the street and behind me. Some areas have had much more rain than we have.

We're prepared, especially after Ike blew thru about 10 years ago. Plenty of everything, and so far we still have electricity which is a blessing. We have a generator for when that goes, but it's a gas one and sooner or later you run out of gas and no one will be open to sell you more. After Ike, I got a gas stove so I wouldn't have to cook outside over a propane burner. We can't have the big propane tanks in the city.

These tropical storms always cause us the most trouble; so much rain. I'm watching the local news and they're air-lifting folks by helicopter out down the way; I can hear them in the distance. This is event is truly catastrophic, and if it keeps raining it's going to get a lot worse. So many people on their rooftops in the rain, or maybe drowning in their attics.

Debbie K
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Barclay

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #4 on: August 27, 2017, 06:15:23 PM »

We don't have rain in southern California so no :)
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finegemdesigns

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #5 on: August 28, 2017, 01:13:52 AM »

You mean like what happened a couple of years ago in October to South Carolina?
Nope.
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Slabbercabber

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #6 on: August 28, 2017, 05:22:04 AM »

Houston is currently getting a break.  Up here, 60 miles North, it has been raining hard for 48 hours straight.  The lake is up two feet and about to rise over the our sea wall.  If it does that it means the level is over the top of the dam.  I am on Lake Livingston.  This is a huge reservoir, 5 miles across and 36 miles long. If the lake fills the only other buffer before Houston is Lake Conroe.  The Trinity river without those lakes to help will add enormous amounts of water to the Houston misery.  The river authority reports both reservoirs at 100%.
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Debbie K

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #7 on: August 28, 2017, 07:36:26 AM »

It's just unusual that they actually told the truth in their forecast; they're usually not so pessimistic to actually put up a forecast like that.

Slabbercabber, sorry to hear that. They're already releasing from Barker and Addicks reservoirs as they are not sound structurally. That water typically will inundate the east side, not just the river. Livingston is an earthen dam, also, and I remember the problems they had in the 70's with the erosion from that unnamed catastrophic flood. I hope you are on the right side of it.

Believe it or not, I am so old that I went up to the future site of Lake Livingston before the dam was built. My dad was from the area and sold resort property on the lake on weekends; I used to be very familiar with that part of the world.
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Debbie K

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #8 on: September 01, 2017, 04:38:34 PM »

Well, all told we got about 37" of rain in about 36 hours. The flooding starts across the street from me, and about 2 streets behind me. I am so lucky. When we bought this house, I checked the flood plain and at that time it was in the 1000 year flood plain. They've since rezoned me to 1/4 of my lot in the 100 year and 3/4 in the 500 year. I got water in my old garage area, other than that, no problems. Except all of my goldfish; they were last seen swimming around on my patio and in my back yard before they disappeared. I couldn't try to go get them because I would have made enough waves opening and closing the door that it would have come in my house. Some of them were 7 or 8 years old. Oh well, they had a good run. I'm afraid that they were nothing more that catfood bait on their way to the bay. It was pretty sad. We had built up the sides of the pond to try to keep this from happening, but no where near high enough for this event. Two of my three feral cats hunkered down on the patio, the other one didn't turn up for 4 days, as did my two baby opossums that have been freeloading off my cats' food.

Got out for the first time yesterday and some of the flood damage is pretty horrific. It sounds a little less like a war zone; not so many helicopters flying over as on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. They were plucking people off the rooftops a few miles from here. Most of the people who are in the low lying areas already evacuated because they knew what was likely to happen. It was the ones that had never been flooded before that were caught by surprise and I so easily could have been one of them.

Many friends and family have flooded that never flooded before. My best friend may not get the water out of her neighborhood for weeks to be able to go home. What's amazing to me is the scope of this disaster and how few fatalities there are, at least so far.

So many times the media plays up an event to make it seem worse than it is; not in this case. This is going to have a big impact on the petro-chemical business for the foreseeable future. They say that Houston produces over 60% of the ethylene for the US and it going to impact anything that makes or uses plastic. I'm wondering if the population will decrease; they say more than 1 house in 10 is damaged and if my end of town is any indication, they have grossly underestimated. Just wondering where all those folks are going to go live.

Debbie K
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hummingbirdstones

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #9 on: September 01, 2017, 05:00:43 PM »

I'm so glad you are safe and dry!  I've been watching the whole thing and my heart goes out to the folks who have lost everything.  It seems to be very orderly down there and I'm happy that there's not more loss of life than what's been reported.  I'm sure it will go up, though, as they are able to get to homes as the water recedes to check for people.   :sad5:

Stay safe ... we're all praying for you folks down in Texas and Louisiana.
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Robin

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #10 on: September 01, 2017, 05:21:06 PM »

Glad to hear you're safe and dry.  I've been wondering how you were doing since your first post.  Kudos for checking the flood plain and history before buying your home.  Most people don't, with sometimes disastrous results as you've seen.  Wish we could do the same with earthquakes out here in CA but fate decrees otherwise.

It's very sad for those who've been flooded out.  Similar storms in the past have dumped nearly as much rain as Harvey but increasing populations since then, and the development that goes with it, have resulted in much greater overall damage this time.  Hopefully the death toll will remain low and that the homeless will find adequate shelter and relief. 

Thanks for the update.
   
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ileney

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #11 on: September 01, 2017, 09:38:30 PM »

So glad to hear you are well!
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edgarscale

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #12 on: September 02, 2017, 04:03:48 PM »

the calm after the storm.    i hope and pray everyone affected has their life put back into normalcy as soon as possible. 
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Debbie K

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Re: Have you guys EVER seen a forecast like this before?
« Reply #13 on: November 01, 2017, 07:22:11 AM »

So, I haven’t been able to log on to the forum for over a month; nearly two, actually. In the meantime, I discovered that the water that got in my studio was high enough that it got to the fiberglass wool insulation and there was mold growing on the sheetrock, wood and the paper on the wool.

I decided that if it happened once, it could probably happen again. This is my old garage and about 8 inches lower than my house’s slab. So I cut out the sheetrock and insulation 16” up and replaced it with Styrofoam insulation and concrete tileboard instead of sheetrock. I used tile adhesive instead of plaster to tape, float and texture. Instead of using wood trim, I went with plastic trim.

Of course, everything had to be bleached repeatedly and dried out thoroughly before it got painted with mold blocking/killing paint. And everything had to be moved out. It seems that every piece of equipment I have weighs about 60 pounds. And then there were the rocks…so many rocks. Most of them are still in the backyard.

The flooding here in Houston was truly biblical. There are whole neighborhoods that are now ghost towns; I honestly don’t know if people are ever going to be able to rebuild. Last week I was driving through one and it takes a while to realize that there is no noise. They look okay; the city has picked up most of the mountains of trash and the yards have ugly scars curbside where all the trash was piled and the plants and grass died. But there are no cars, kids or animals or people going about their business.

My best friend has finally moved from a hotel to an apartment; it’ll be months before she’ll get her house fixed. There are just not enough contractors to go around. Another friend is living in a house with no sheetrock 4 feet up and no floors.

In view of all this, I still feel really lucky. My life and studio were disrupted, but my house was fine. I can’t imagine going through everything I owned that was waterlogged with mold growing on it and deciding what to keep and what to throw away. I’m sad that I lost all my goldfish, but my outside feral kitties are all okay.

I haven’t heard of anyone actually getting an insurance payment yet. Some have said that checks have been authorized; but, like I said, no checks have been received. I’m really interested in how the FEMA flood insurance is going to get paid out; they didn’t have enough money to pay all these claims and after this happened there were two other hurricanes…

The auto-insurers are paying. There were more than a half a million cars that were flooded and totaled; the car graveyards are amazing. Be mindful, they are starting to sell them. They’re supposed to issue a new title that states they’ve been flooded, but be careful. They’ll go all over the country

Just thought I’d update you guys.

Debbie K
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