Posted on 08/26/2017 4:39:50 AM PDT by NautiNurse
Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Rockport TX about 10:00PM CDT Friday night. Top sustained winds were 130mph. Rockport High School sustained heavy damage when a portion of the roof collapsed. A senior housing complex collapsed. The Rockport courthouse sustained major damage with a cargo trailer halfway in the building. Multiple tornadoes reported in the Houston/Galveston areas. There are reports of scattered structural fires and a shooting was reported in Corpus Christi. Residents along the San Bernard River were advised to evacuate and most TX Gulf coast counties are under flash flood watches.
Many locations are under a boil-water notice. Power outages are widespread. President Donald Trump promptly granted a Disaster Declaration to Texas Governor Greg Abbotts request. More than 700 members of the Texas Army and Air National Guards, Texas State Guard and the Texas Military Department have been activated and are positioning themselves throughout the state ahead of Hurricane Harvey and its anticipated landfall later this week. Ahead of the storm, FEMA sent supplies from its warehouse in Fort Worth to a staging point at Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio.
Mash image to find lots of satellite imagery links
Public Advisories
Severe Weather Watches and Warnings TX
NHC Discussions
NHC Local Hurricane Statements Corpus Christi
NHC Local Hurricane Statements Galveston
Buoy Data near Harvey
Thread I: Potentially Catastrophic Hurricane Harvey Approaches Texas Gulf Coast
If I follow what is said (and left out) here, a total of 8000 cfs will be flowing by noon today, which increases risk to both gates, and which will NOT stop reservoir levels from continuing to rise:
water-from-addicks-barker-reservoirs-underway/
Similarly, drinking water contamination is highly likely with floods--especially when paired with power outages.
With such widespread and persistent flood water, mosquito-borne illnesses will shortly become a concern.
Worth saying again--flood waters are a very serious public health risk.
Rashi Vats FOX 26
@rashivats
Slenna Plantation in Ft. Bend county now under MANDATORY Evacuation order Determine safe route - Pack essentials - take your pets -
Water rising. Barker Reservoir at capacity. Slow water release causing flooding in Cinco Ranch/ Kelliwood community.
...
From this link, we get an idea of the shortfall between max outflow and potential inflow. In 2016, they let 7100 cfs out, versus 132,000 cfs of inflow.
Here, they plan on 8000 cfs discharges, in the face of presumably equal or higher inflows.
They also make the point that whether they deliberately release or not, overflow from around the ends of the dams will still enter Buffalo Bayou. The ends of the dams are hardned to permit overflow, but, like Oroville California, the entire flow path if using these spillways is neither certain, nor engineered, nor tested.
It looks like these emergency overflows will be tested in any event, controlled releases or not, as the 8000 cfs combined outflow from both the Addicks and Barker gates doesn’t begin to accomodate an inflow which probably exceeds the 2016 event, measured at 132,000 cfs. Worst of all worlds here. Max outflow straining gates with known past problems, inundation around reservoir perimeter as inflow grwayly exceeds max outflow, and uncontrolled releases around the heavily developed ends of both dams.
Fort Bend County OEM
@fbcoem
7m
***IMPORTANT*** The voluntary evacuation order for Pecan Grove has been upgraded to a MANDATORY EVACUATION.
No prob, stay safe.
I’ve been thinking of that Oroville spillway.
8000? is that from both Dams combined? 4000 each max?
never mind... i see in your post it is..
8000 combined is all
Well goody for us all.............Shemp Smith is at the helm on Faux news now...(let the hysteria begin!) I hope he is wearing waterproof mascara today.
We're saved!
I saw him yammerin like the prissy sissy he IS
Heartbreaking.
8000 cubic feet per second from each dam straight into the Buffalo Bayou started at noon.
For starters.
I confess—have not tuned in to FNC since Friday night. The local storm coverage is much more informative—and not sensationalized. The local news crews are too exhausted to be sensational at this point.
Bunch of places under new ME orders. COE saw this coming and prepped the elevation maps and orders in advance.
Issued said orders last night, not to be executed until daylight. That sort of confidence tells me they have everything up till now projected by computer, on an ongoing basis, and currently feel they are ahead of the curve in advance awareness.
Hydrological curves, runoff versus absorption, inflow versus outflow, retention volumes, and flow channel dynamics, depth and velocity, were well understood concepts back in my civil engineering student days, well before the computer revolution. These days, assuming they haven’t lost access to their computers during the Evac noted by NN, they should be able to plot a 90 day future, within hours of receiving a given rainfall estimate.
They have a solid idea of what they expect...and,also what they cannot know in advance...like gate failure, or an embankment penetration.
They aren’t about to stampede millions with an uncontrolled release of information. They will be working w top officials to set the stage for moving however many people need to be moved...thru the environmental “static” of road closures already in play, and interdepartmental comms snafus surrounding any unprecedented mass evac.
I’m not sure yet how we would...receive...advance notice of any such occurrance. There WOULD be leaks, and puzzle pieces exposed, but recognizing them as such, and predicting where to look for them, is something I’ve just begun to consider.
They are doing very well! Still need a ton of prayers!
Originally, Addicks was set for release at 0200 this morning. Per Lindner, Barker would be "in another day or two." It appears they released both dams overnight.
8k total, both gates, is the figure I’ve seen, twice. For brevity’s sake, I’ll give you the extra 8k, and raise you another 8k to boot.
With 2016 inflows of 132k, outflows are just a drop in the bucket.
The gates are limited in capacity. 8k total actually surprises me, earlier research indicated more like 4k total, both gates. Of course the ends of the dams are uncontrolled above certain levels.
They did not actually harness this flow. They built a pair of finite capacity buffers, planned and did not fund a bypass outflow channel, and at least part of the original buffer capacity has been obviated by developments right down to the upper reservoir’s “edge”.
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