Hurricane Nicholas

Nicholas abruptly strengthened to a hurricane and made landfall Monday evening, but Corinne and I felt relatively safe. We were well-stocked with supplies. Flooding and major wind damage weren't major concern; we are on the fourth floor of a concrete midrise apartment complex in a neighborhood that drained pretty well during Harvey. 

I was, however, concerned about losing electricity. Unpleasant memories from previous weather events - the blackouts caused by last February's freeze, the two weeks I was without power following Hurricane Ike - played in my mind as I lay in bed Monday night, periodically looking at Centerpoint's outage tracker and watching the numbers of customers without electricity climb as Nicholas slowly crept closer.

Luckily, our power never went out. The storm eventually passed, we checked in with friends and family to make sure everybody else was okay, and normal life resumed.

I know not everybody was as lucky as we were. In fact, according to Eric Berger, Nicholas could have been a lot worse had its track just been a little bit different:

A track even 40 or 50 miles further inland would have set up those heaviest rains (10-20 inches, which fell offshore) directly across the Houston metro area, and created a much more serious flood situation. Hopefully this offers you some insight into the challenge of predicting these kinds of rain events. It was a very close call, a matter of miles, between significant inland rainfall flooding in Houston, and relatively clean bayous this morning.

The second factor is wind. Nicholas turned out to be a fairly nasty storm in terms of wind gusts, and pushed a larger storm surge—as high as 6.1 feet into Clear Lake—than predicted. This is a reminder of the power of a hurricane, even one that was “only” a minimal Category 1 storm. The truth is that the track of the storm was very nearly a worst-case one for Houston in terms of winds and putting a maximum storm surge across Galveston Island and into Galveston Bay.

It is September 14, the absolute peak of hurricane season in the Atlantic, and a time when sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are at their warmest of the year. So this morning I’m thinking about what would have happened if we had not had some wind shear over the western Gulf of Mexico yesterday, or if Nicholas had been able to consolidate a more well defined and consistent center of circulation. It would have been much, much worse for all of us had a significantly stronger hurricane made landfall last night. So while we pick up the pieces this morning, realize Nicholas could have been much more of a terror.

These storms are inherently random; their paths and effects are not always easy to predict. It's why you can't leave hurricanes to chance. Always be prepared.

Kuff's thoughts are similar to mine.