99.35% of your customers in power sounds really great, until you realize that with a customer base the size of Houston, that means, 15000+ are without power….
A little piece here, a little piece there... a piece of Houston, perchance...
Bonus points if you can name the movie I’m misquoting. Hint: They’re lyrics, and substitute three European countries to correct the quote.
You know the one, WWII, where someone’s standing in a street, shooting at a strafing plane and the bullets from either wing-mounted gun go right to either side of him? I think Patton did that? Well, that’s Houston right now, between the rain-band guns of Harvey’s strafe.
Bang! Pow! Zowiee!
(as always, click to enlarge).
The strong/weak banding is saving our butts; it’s giving the ground time to recover. Frankly, I napped through the last bit of rain shown here, but the Harris County Flood Control District says I didn’t miss much. On the other hand
, most of Corpus Christi would liked to have taken it as easy as I have (other than some stupid running around in it this morning).
And that's just the rain...
Well, technically, within seconds of my shutting the computer off last night, the first tornado warning was sounded for far southwest Harris County. I got up almost two hours ago to do some last-minute “should-have-been-done-yesterday” stuff, and took this snapshot of the 12 hour rainfall then:
Areas just off the map to the west and south had 6-8″ overnight, but within minutes, a squall line arrived, and it started here. Unfortunately, when I started this post about 7:40 this morning, I was concentrating on the southwest, and clipped this picture too small.
Clearing... and one of the two working red lights we found.
Not particularly impressive, but then I was kind of busy driving. I literally had to dodge two downed trees and drive through several places with curb-high water. The pictures I managed to take were after the squall line passed through, and I could, you know, see to drive. But here’s the reality… look at the rainfall totals around BW8 and I-10 East (my neck of the woods), compared to two hours ago… and bear in mind that it really happened in thirty minutes.
Fortunately, the bayous are handling it for now.
Notice the big gap? It will move....
They’re talking about up to 40″ of rain in isolated areas, because no one knows where these gaps will be, nor the squall lines, nor where the storm is going to go after the next two days. For comparison, Houston normally averages 50 inches in a year.
Storm totals so far, from NOAA:
So far, not all it's cracked up to be, but not a yawner either. Still hurricane force winds, and it's stalling.
I’m told there’s a hurricane out there somewhere. Not even an inch of rain in the last 3 hours
, in Harris County. Scratch that, not even a half-inch. Much ado about nothing in Houston so far.
On the other hand, I’m sure they feel entirely different about it in Corpus.
Meanwhile, it’s a little breezy, with light showers at times, here on the Bridge. Some portions of extreme southeast Harris County are reporting almost an inch of rain in the last three hours. Zzzzzzz. Don’t expect exciting
, breathless blogging over that level. I may not update until late tonight or even tomorrow at this rate.
Seriously, it’s been a quiet (and dry) afternoon. I picked up some batteries just to be safe, but the rain bands have mostly been staying south of the City. But one person’s fortune is another persons… um, something.
Looks like the eye is still pretty ragged. That may be the only thing saving us from further strengthening.
Well, our office isn’t in direct customer (read: public) service, and we’re all Tier 3 employees (no emergency duties, nor standby), so our boss just told us to bail. Not uncommon, since that gets us out of the way of the idiots, last-minute evac-ers, preppers, and actual emergency personnel. Plus some employees may have to deal with kids from schools deciding to close late.
I will be spending a couple of hours making the last minute preparations before my next post. For now, I’ve got another half-hour of work to get done before I run off.
Clarification: I meant from work; I’m not leaving Houston. Sorry I confused you Brickmuppet.
