Posted on 08/28/2017 6:32:35 AM PDT by davikkm
an evacuation has to be planned... the last time they did an evacuation... there was bumper to bumper traffic for 150 miles (all the way from Houston to Austin)...which means that you would have a worse situation with a bunch of people and vehicles stranded along the highway in high water.
if you aren’t from here... you don’t know what is going on... so please refrain from commenting. It doesn’t help anything.
Same here, I’ve never seen a ham ping list. I’d like to be on it if it exists.
I have been through a houston hurricane...and I would have evacuated on this one depending on where I lived.
Btw..down playing the severity to residents is wrong..and it will come back to bite them
Just like the nursing home with elderly in waist deep water
There is a difference between telling people they MUST evacuate and telling them they should STAY. As I heard it, this mayor told people to ignore the Governor-trust him instead-and NOT leave. Of course no one was prevented from evacuating, but hearing a Mayor say NOT to would tend to make trusting sorts feel safe. I think he’s criminally liable and would make a good companion for Ray-Ray Nagin in jail.
Oh yeah- it would be a ton of fun to hear weather folk talking about Laquishanda and Qua’travion(watch those apostrophes!) Who wouldn’t run from a storm named Demoniquesha?
I live here, and I don't think he lied, Democrat or Republican.
Early on, the models were uncertain. They were a spaghetti bowl of paths; some of them went north, others went back into the gulf, and a few stalled at various locations. This was the definition of the "worst case scenario;" the storm stalled west of Houston and the "dirty side" kept throwing bands of rain at us. It really is a "black swan" event, a 500 year flood, if you will.
Nobody acts on the <1% probability event. They note it, they may have a contingency in place just in case, but you plan for the >10% probability scenarios.
I think it's a very real possibility that they remember the evacuation of Rita (photos of stalled cars on the freeway are posted elsewhere), and were more afraid of a scene like the Roman chariots in the Red Sea from The Ten Commandments.
You have to remember that Houston is flat, and the ground is mostly clay-based soil that doesn't absorb water too well. The Houston freeway system is designed to be a water catch-basin to prevent the neighborhoods from flooding during "normal" storms. I shudder at the thought of evacuating people stuck on the freeways as the water from Harvey begins to fill the roadways.
This was a no-win situation for decision-makers. For every possible decision, the downside greatly outweighed upside.
-PJ
Some of the Skywarn storm chaser frequencies had some activity, but the amateur bands have been mostly silent.
That surprised me.
-PJ
Not sure what what happen to my comment in post 69. Most people can’t just decided to take a week off anytime they want. Lots of people live paycheck to paycheck. People providing critical services can’t just say I am taking the week off either. That includes the convenience store clerk selling bottled water, etc.
Nasa had up a prediction days ago of up to 50 Inches in Houston
Out here, they were relying on the "hurricane hunter" planes that flew into the storm, and the various models and historic tracks.
Early last week, Harvey was being reported as a tropical wave that was crossing the Yucatan Peninsula into the Bay of Campeche. The forecast was for Harvey to cross into Mexico, with a slight chance of it going north into the Gulf. By Wednesday, Harvey went into the Gulf and became a tropical depression, and Thursday it became a tropical storm when an eye developed.
I recall on Wednesday that landfall was not predicted until late Saturday night, but when we all woke up on Thursday morning, the latest report was that Harvey rapidly intensified and accelerated forecasts by 18 hours. By Thursday afternoon, Harvey was a Category 1 hurricane, forecast to be a Category 3 when it made landfall at Corpus Christi. By Friday, it became a Category 4 hurricane and made landfall 30 miles to the east in the early hours of Saturday morning.
An honest accounting of this has to recognize that Houston civil agencies only realistically had between Wednesday and Friday to act. There was no time to organize a mandatory evacuation, given that everyone was working a normal weekday on Wednesday, doing normal hurricane preparations during their off hours.
This was a storm that appeared with little warning, accelerated rapidly close to shore, then hit and stalled at the worst possible location. Nobody had time to mobilize anything with such short warning.
-PJ
I posted yesterday that many who were rescued by citizen boats said, "I hesitated calling 911 because I didn't want to take a seat from someone more in need."
That's the story of how Houston is persevering.
-PJ
“Where do Democrats think 3 feet of rain is going to go?”
Or, perhaps, into the Pacific Ocean, in order to tip over Guam?
That is the very definition of a clusterfu&*. It would have been worse than what actually happened. I’m afraid that this was a lose-lose situation for not only the mayor of Houston, but for its people, too.
IMHO, you either hunker down or get out way early. Dealing with both a near-Biblical flood AND massive crowding is a recipe for getting dead.
From what I have read, Galveston only had ten inches of rain. Houston 25-50 inches in various places.
Sorry, but most credible forecasts showed SE Houston with 50 inches of rain. This is incompetence.
This Wikipedia timeline says that Harvey wasn't even a tropical depression on Tuesday. It was still a disorganized tropical wave.
- Aug 17 (Thursday): Harvey upgraded to tropical storm.
- Aug 18 (Friday): No change. Still a tropical storm.
- Aug 19 (Saturday): Harvey downgraded to tropical depression.
- Aug 20 (Sunday): Harvey downgraded to tropical wave.
- Aug 21 (Monday): No change. Still a tropical wave.
- Aug 22 (Tuesday): No change. Still a tropical wave.
- Aug 23 (Wednesday): Upgraded to tropical depression.
- Aug 24 (Thursday): Morning - Upgraded to tropical storm.
- Aug 24 (Thursday): Afternoon - Upgraded to category 1 hurricane.
- Aug 25 (Friday): Morning - Upgraded to category 2 hurricane.
- Aug 25 (Friday): Afternoon - Upgraded to category 3 hurricane.
- Aug 25 (Friday): Evening - Upgraded to category 4 hurricane.
- Aug 26 (Saturday): Morning - Landfall at Rockport (3:00am).
When did these credible forecasts happen? On Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday?
Harvey was just a tropical wave in the Bay of Campeche off of the Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday. Nobody was credibly forecasting rain in Houston from it on Tuesday.
It wasn't until Thursday that Harvey became a hurricane, and it rapidly grew in intensity about 18 hours faster than people forecasted.
So when was it that people were supposed to start planning for an evacuation? Thursday?
-PJ
See true pundit...turns out rebecca reisig was telling the truth about dem Mayer being warned ..straight from army corps of engineers
We should not spend vital federal resources in large blue cities.
Joe Bastardi from Weatherbell.com was forecasting almost exactly what happened already on Wednesday.
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