Snow Day!

Here are some obligatory photos of last Tuesday's winter weather event. 

We got about three inches of snow in my part of Midtown, which is as much accumulation as I've seen from a single snowfall in my 50-plus years of living in Houston. Other parts of town got even more.

On one hand, I find freshly-fallen snow to be very visually appealing and am loathe to step in it or disturb it in any way. On the other hand, few things are as pleasant as the sound of snow scrunching under one's shoe. (I also recognize I might not have the same feelings about snow if I lived someplace where it was commonplace; I have a lot of acquaintances from places up north who can't wait for the winter to end and the snow to disappear.)

Between the lack of traffic noise and the snow's sound-absorbent properties, it was eerily quiet as I walked around the streets of my neighborhood.

There were a handful of motorists who decided to ignore the warnings and drive in the slushy streets, but I certainly wasn't one of them. I normally work from home on Tuesdays to begin with, so not being able to travel to the office posed no disruption to me. 

At least a few people in my neighborhood made snowmen or snow angels, and a younger version of myself would have probably done the same. At my age, however, I was content just to walk around and take in the sights. The snow was a very beautiful treat, and one that probably won't occur again here for awhile. 

Beryl and Black Cat

Greetings from the fabulous metropolis of Sulphur, Louisiana*, where Corinne and I are spending a rather impromptu "vacation" on account of the fact that we don't have any power at our home in Houston. After some unbearably sweaty and sleepless nights at home, and with the understanding that Centerpoint would not be restoring our electricity anytime soon, we realized that we needed to decamp to someplace that had internet access and air conditioning. This was the closest place available.

Hurricane Beryl - which was originally expected to make landfall well south of here but continued to track northward in spite of the projections of pretty much every meteorologist - made landfall early Monday morning. The east side of the eyewall roared over us between 8 and 11 am that day, causing our townhome to literally shake in the wind and driving rain.

It was a stressful and exhausting experience, to say the least; I last hunkered down through a hurricane during Ike in 2008 and this was just as agonizing as I remembered, if not more so. I continually worried that a massive wind gust would blow out a window or rip off our roof, in spite of the fact that Beryl was "only" a Category 1. I was very relieved when the worst passed through and the winds began to calm down around noon. We lost power at about 8:30 am Monday morning, but the house itself thankfully does not appear to have sustained any major damage.

As Beryl approached on Sunday, we noticed that Black Cat (his real name is "Orion" but we've always called him "Black Cat" because that's what Kirby called him when he was a toddler) was failing. He was 16 1/2 years old, which is pretty aged for a cat, and I noticed earlier in the week that he was eating less and the limp in his back leg was getting worse. But as of Saturday evening, he seemed to be doing fine, and even contentedly hung out with me in my office as I web-surfed and doom-scrolled on my computer. But by Sunday evening he was clearly not well. He was lying on the floor, weak and barely able to move. 

I could tell he was suffering and wanted to put him out of his misery. Unfortunately, no vets were available on account of the fact that it was Sunday night and the hurricane was approaching; even the 24-hour emergency vet on the Southwest Freeway told me (after being put on hold for fifteen minutes) that they were hopelessly backed-up, with only one vet on staff. So we tried to make him as comfortable as possible as he lay on the floor, his breathing increasingly labored, his body all but immobile. I wrapped him in a towel. He still purred when I pet him and croaked a few weak meows to us; but he refused any food or water I tried to give him. Black Cat hung to life even as the hurricane roared over us, but he finally expired at about 8 pm Monday evening. 

He was annoying and obnoxious, and he loved me unconditionally. I'll miss him. Orion "Black Cat" Gray 2007-2024

Monday night we tried to sleep, in spite of the lack of electricity and the dead cat in the living room. The still, humid air made everything uncomfortable as we lay in our beds in pools of sweat. The sirens, loud trucks and droning generators (from neighbors prescient enough to have bought them) rang in our ears. Maybe we dozed off a bit here and there, but we didn't get anything approaching quality sleep.

On Tuesday we wearily went over to my parents' house to check on them, as they had also lost power. While we were there we buried Black Cat in their front yard. We had always planned to bury Black Cat when he died and plant a tree atop him, as we did with Elektra. However, given the circumstances, the only sapling available for us to plant was a neglected mulberry sitting in a pot in the corner of my parents' yard. It would have to do.

I hope Black Cat's decomposing body causes the sapling to grow into the most beautiful mulberry tree ever. As annoying as he could be, with his incessant meowing and his biting and his constant demanding of food, he deserves to live on in another organism. I'm going to miss his ridiculously loud purr most of all.

Black Cat's final resting place, amidst debris left from the previous day's hurricane.

Tuesday evening Corinne and I were able to seek air-conditioned refuge and recharge our phones at my neighborhood bar, which had regained power, while my parents relocated to our friends' house in Pearland who also had electricity. That night Centerpoint released the first version of their useless power outage tracker: it showed our neighborhood as "partially energized," which is true in that some people around us on different circuits did have electricity. But we still don't, and as of the time of this writing Centerpoint's map still can't tell us when our power will be restored. Tuesday night was, once again, stifling, sweaty and sleepless. Our townhome simply wasn't built to catch a breeze or otherwise provide natural ventilation in case of power failure.

Until a crew comes to replace and reconnect the fuse armatures that are currently hanging down, we won't have power. 

Wednesday morning, as Corinne and I began to pick through our refrigerator and toss yogurt, cheese, mayonnaise and other spoiled perishables into the trash, we exhaustedly began musing about finding a hotel. That afternoon, while again seeking refuge at the neighborhood bar (and watching England punch their ticket to the Euro 2024 final), we got serious about it and began looking for available lodging. But with every Houston-area hotel either booked or unpowered, the only options available were out of town. So we found this place and made our way here - the two-hour trip along I-10 felt like an eternity - last night.

It was the right decision. We got a good, air-conditioned night's sleep last night, I was finally able to get some work done today (my employer gave us emergency leave for the past three days but as of this afternoon the office and its systems were back up and running), we were able to do some laundry, eat our first proper meal in three days, and both of us feel so much better than we did just a day ago. We will return to Houston tomorrow; as of late this afternoon we learned that electricity had been restored to my parents' house so we will have a place to stay tomorrow night regardless of whether our house has power.

I may have a lot more to say about this experience - why the forecasters struggled with Beryl's track, would it have made a difference had I taken Black Cat (whose demise I had been sadly expecting for months) to the vet earlier, why Centerpoint's infrastructure could not withstand a Category 1 hurricane and why their post-hurricane restoration effort has been a complete clusterfuck, whether it even makes sense to continue living in a city as dependent on air conditioning and as prone to climate-related catastrophe as Houston - in a future post. As for now, I'm just happy the unexpectedly brutal week of Beryl and Black Cat is coming to an end.

*I really shouldn't make fun of this place. Every person we've encountered here in Sulphur - from the staff at our hotel to the clerk at the convenience store to the attendant at the laundromat to the waiter at the Waffle House at the intersection of I-10 and LA-27 - has been nothing short of wonderful and empathetic to us.

A cloudy eclipse on the farm

Corinne and I drove up to her aunt's farm near Mexia last weekend, hoping to see the big eclipse. Her farm was the path of totality, meaning that we would get the opportunity to see the sun fully obscured by the moon for three and a half minutes.

Unfortunately, the clouds did not cooperate, and during the three-and-a-half minutes of totality we could only catch glimpses of the sun fully obscured by the moon. These two pictures, from two separate cameras, are the best I could do (and don't compare to the pictures taken by several of my Facebook friends, who had better weather and superior camera equipment): 

I also got a short video of the totality during a break in the clouds. Once again, my iPhone's camera just can't do it justice.

Even though I was only afforded brief views of the totality due to the cloud cover, I nevertheless marveled at the sight of a full solar eclipse. I've never witnessed one before and may never see one again.

Of course, as luck would have it, right after the totality ended the skies began to clear up.

Here are some other interesting pictures I took during the eclipse:

The crescent sun shines through a pinhole in the barn roof shortly before the totality.

The sky during the totality. It was actually darker than this picture suggests.

The crescent sun through the clouds, also shortly before the totality.

I took some pictures of the farm's flora and fauna as well:

Spring is wildflower season, as this field of bluebonnets growing on the side of the farm attests. 

Wildflowers such as winecups and blue-eyed grass were also plentiful, and attracted lots of butterflies.

The bull warily watches me as he protects his herd. Glad that barbed wire is there!

Hurricanes and snowfall, revisited

Many, many years ago, I pondered the relationship between hurricanes and snowfall in Houston, as there seemed to be a prevalent perception among Houstonians that a hurricane striking the Houston region during the summer made it more likely that a snowfall would occur that following winter. I based my post on a now-deleted blog entry from a now-retired local TV meteorologist, who at the time wrote: 

Is there a connection between southeast Texas hurricanes and snowstorms? I don't know. But I do know there are larger patterns within the atmosphere that we don't completely understand. If someone had a lot of time and a lot of money, this would be an interesting weather connection to investigate.

As it turns out, Space City Weather recently did some investigating about this phenomenon and determined that there is no such correlation: 

One of the most common winter forecast refrains I’ve heard since moving to Houston in 2012 is that if we have a hurricane in summer, we almost always have snow in the subsequent winter. 2021 saw us get hit with Hurricane Nicholas, so obviously that means we should get ready for an 1895-style snowball fight, right? In words of the great philosopher Lee Corso, “Not so fast my friend.”

After defining what "hit by a hurricane" means (and explaining, for example, why Harvey does not qualify), Eric Berger and Matt Lanza do some statistical analysis:

Since 1895, the data (plus 2021) suggests Houston has seen snow in 23 percent of all winters, hurricane or no hurricane. Based on the hurricane data, seven out of 30 winters following a hurricane hit since 1895 have seen snow, placing our odds at—wait for it—23 percent. The takeaway? It’s fun to say that Houston sees snow in winters following a hurricane. The statistics say that is false, and the odds of snow in a post-hurricane winter are perfectly identical to the odds of snow in any other winter.

The belief that a hurricane hitting Houston in the summer causes a snowfall the following winter is an example of illusory correlation; i.e. the perception of a relationship between two variables that in fact have none. While this particular one may have brought comfort to Houstonians - "the hurricane was horrible, but at least this means we'll get snow this winter" - it is nevertheless an illusion.

Bummer.

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.

It started out nicely enough...

When the winter blast made its way into Houston two Sundays ago, it started out nicely enough. Work for both Corinne and myself had been canceled for the following Monday, so we could stay up as late as we wanted. We stood out on our balcony, sipped drinks, and watched as the sleet began falling that evening. We were hoping that actual snowflakes would begin appearing at some point. 

There was one brief power outage in the wee hours of Monday morning, but it didn't last too long and I thought it was simply a routine rolling blackout that we had been warned to expect. 

At about 4:30 am, I put on my coat and went down to the front of our apartment complex for a ground-level view of the winter weather. The gentle fall of freezing precipitation (still mostly sleet, but some small snowflakes mixed in) was beginning to accumulate on the lawns and sidewalks, and the icy mixture on the ground made an enjoyable soft crunching sound as I walked on it. The fountain in front of the complex was beginning to develop a layer of ice. It was cold and quiet and I was the only one around. 

It was delightful.

About an hour later, the power went off again. It wouldn't come back on again for 24 hours. It was hard for me to fall asleep, as I am so accustomed to a fan (or some sort of other white noise) running while I sleep that the total silence actually kept me awake. But at some point I dozed off for a few hours.

I awoke as the wintry precipitation began to move out of Houston, and found our interior courtyard in a blanket of snow and ice. It was pretty and tranquil.

Corinne and I later took a walk around our neighborhood to see everything covered in winter.  People made snowmen and had snowball fights. We had to walk carefully on the sidewalks as the ice was very slippery.

The lack of electricity, however, was an inconvenience, especially as the outage dragged on. We were limited in what we could eat due to the fact that we couldn't cook anything. We were limited in the amount of information we could get about the storm because the lack of operating cell towers made upload speeds to our phones (whose battery reserves steadily continued to dwindle) slow. We wanted to drive somewhere that was open to maybe get a warm meal and recharge our phones, but we didn't want to risk driving on icy roads (and few places were open anyway). So we sat in the dark and ate sandwiches and played Uno by lantern light.

Monday evening we began to worry the food would spoil if it stayed in the refrigerator, so we began moving perishables out to the balcony so they would stay cold.

Our apartment, being a unit facing the interior courtyard on the fourth floor of a concrete structure, generally traps heat fairly well; we rarely, if ever, have to run the heater. However, after a day without power even it was beginning to get cold.

The power did flicker on again shortly after midnight on Tuesday. After a few minutes, however, it went out again. It returned again around 5 am, and stayed on for most of the day. This was a relief, as it allowed us to recharge our devices, watch the news and cook ourselves dinner. I got another text from work saying that things would be closed again on Tuesday; the power outages had shut down our network so nobody could remotely log in. 

Tuesday evening the electricity went out once again, which meant another evening of sitting in the cold and dark. Happy Fat Tuesday!

Wednesday, the electricity was intermittently on and off all day long. Work was canceled for a third straight day. We also had to deal with another problem: low water pressure (because the city's pumps had no electricity), and a "boil water" notice for the little water we could get (because the city was concerned about bacteria in the water supply owing to the low pressure).

My parents came over Wednesday afternoon and stayed the night with us. They had gone without power for almost two days straight, had nearly frozen to death while trying to sleep the night before, and had no water pressure at all. Even if our electricity continued to cut in and out, they'd still be warmer here than there.

Our complex's management told us to go down to the fountains and fill buckets of water if we needed to flush toilets. So Wednesday evening I made several trips between our unit and the fountain in the courtyard, hauling buckets of water up flights of stairs because I didn't want to risk using the elevator in case the power went out. I was given a taste of what it was like to be a medieval villager getting water from the town well. I was also reminded that I am horribly out of shape.

Our last power outage was Wednesday evening, and it was brief. The following morning, I discovered that my work's network was restored so I was able to log on, check my emails and complete some tasks. (Unfortunately, a lot of my coworkers were still unable to work because they didn't have reliable electricity, were dealing with burst water pipes, or had some other weather-related emergency to attend to.)

Later that morning, the water pressure returned. Then, a neighbor of my parents informed them that their power had returned, so they could go back home.

However, just as we thought things were returning to normal, Corinne got a call from her mother. She had been staying at a friend's house, and had come back home to discover that a pipe had burst in one of her bedroom closets and had completely flooded her house. Corinne's mom is currently staying in a hotel; her house is going to need extensive remediation and some of her personal belongings may be lost forever. 

Yes, this arctic blast was a freak, rare weather event. But this was also an embarrassing and unacceptable systemwide failure of the state's power grid (and no, wind turbines do not deserve all the blame, no matter what the idiots running this state might think). It caused a lot of trouble for a lot of people, and was close to being much, much worse than it was.

The State of Texas must do better. These arctic weather events might be rare, but they do happen. There's no excuse for not having our electrical grid prepared for when they do come.

The death of summer 2020

 Eric Berger eulogizes it: 

The summer of 2020, which featured the 5th warmest July and 8th warmest August on record, threw two tropical cyclones at Houston, and offered unsparing humidity, died on Monday. It was 123 days old. Summer finally lost its fight with fall’s first truly strong front, which blew into Houston on the morning of September 28th. Services have been canceled due to a lack of mourners.

The worst thing about living in Houston is the summer, with the miserable heat and oppressive humidity and mosquitoes and potential for tropical weather, so I'm always happy to see it coming to an end.

Speaking of tropical weather, the death of summer comes only a few days after the (apparent) end of hurricane season in Houston. Once again, Eric explains: 

Houston has had an astonishing month when it comes to tropical cyclones. Four weeks ago we were closely watching Hurricane Laura move along the southern coast of Cuba, toward the Gulf of Mexico. And of course, over the last few days, we dealt with heavy rains from Tropical Storm Beta. So amidst a record-setting tropics season, with more than two months to go until its official end on Nov. 30, could Texas really be done with hurricanes this year?

The answer, we think, is yes.

Eric explains that the odds of a hurricane striking the Texas coast fall dramatically after late September, especially when cold fronts begin pushing through.

Really, the only reason we’re not 100 percent confident that Texas will not see another hurricane this year is because it is 2020. Anything goes this year.

Anything, including zombie hurricanes:

Paulette regained strength and became a tropical storm once more on Monday, according to the National Hurricane Center. Paulette reappeared Monday about 300 miles off the coast of the Azores islands.

These "zombie" storms, like Tropical Storm Paulette, are rare but they have happened before, said CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller.

"Conditions can become hostile for a tropical storm to maintain its intensity, but if it doesn't dissipate completely, it can revive days later when conditions become more favorable," Miller said.

And with the apocalypse that 2020 has been, this year is prime for these spooky storms.

"2020 is a good candidate to experience a zombie storm because water temperatures are above average over a bulk of the Atlantic Ocean, and obviously we are seeing a record number of storms -- which ups the chances one could regenerate," Miller said.

Fortunately, Zombie Paulette dissipated a few days after it arose from the dead, and as of this evening the tropics are clear.

Houston expected to experience sunny, dry and temperate weather for the next several days. Enjoy!

Hurricane Laura

So, half of the "one-two punch" from the tropics didn't really materialize - Marco fizzled out as it reached the Louisiana coast - but the other half, Laura, is about to make life miserable for a lot of people.

For a while it looked like the Houston region was in danger of a direct hit, but the latest models are coming into agreement that the storm will hit to the east of here:

Unless this track shifts back towards the west in the next several hours Houston itself is probably only going to see mild effects - gusty winds and some rain - from this storm. That's good news for us, although communities along the bay and coast (such as the City of Galveston, which is under a mandatory evacuation) could experience problems related to storm surge.

Of course, this is most certainly not good news for folks in Port Arthur, Beaumont and Lake Charles.

A one-two punch from the tropics

Because it just wouldn't be 2020 without two hurricanes in the Gulf at the same time...

Travis Herzog/KTRK

Fortunately, since this graphic was produced earlier today, the forecast has changed somewhat such that Marco no longer appears to be a major threat to Houston. Laura's track is less certain and could still pose a threat to the region. Corinne and I are pretty well stocked up and are secure in our brick-and-concrete mid-rise apartment, so there's nothing to do but keep our eye on the weather while we go about our business.

The more immediate concern is that, as of this evening, both storms are tracking towards the same general location in southeastern Louisiana: a potential one-two punch that New Orleans most certainly does not need.

The coming week, incidentally, will mark the third anniversary of Harvey's landfall, and the fifteenth anniversary of Katrina's landfall.

I was that idiot

You know the people who try to drive during extreme weather events and then get stuck in their cars due to rising floodwaters? The people we laugh at when we see them on the news? "Why did that idiot try to drive in this rainstorm? Doesn't he know that this city's roads flood during heavy rains!?"

Well, a couple of Thursdays ago, during the deluge caused by the remnants of Tropical Storm Imelda, I was that idiot.

That morning I went to TxDOT's district headquarters for a meeting. I wasn't particularly concerned about the weather at that point - the deluge forecast for the previous day had never materialized, and it was not raining at all during my trip to the meeting. I noticed on the radar that there was a rain band sagging southward through the city but I didn't think too much of it at the time. My hope was that it would pass through fairly quickly while I was at the meeting and clear out before I made my way back to the office. I wanted to get back there and wrap up a few things as quickly as I could, because Corinne and I were scheduled to fly to New Orleans that afternoon.

It wasn't too long before the storms arrived. The lights in the meeting room flickered with every lighting strike, and the windows rattled with the thunder. The guy from METRO sitting next to me received an alert on his phone that his agency had just suspended all bus and rail service. I received a text from Southwest Airlines informing me that my flight had been delayed one hour. The radar app on my phone showed ominous hues of orange and red. Things weren't looking good.

By the time the meeting had ended, the city was facing a serious flooding situation. However, my desire to get back to my office and try to make my flight overrode what should have been common sense. The radar indicated that things might be about to clear up; if I stay off the below-grade freeways and keep to major surface streets, I reasoned to myself, I should be able to make to back to the office.

So I (stupidly) headed down Washington Avenue towards Shepherd, and then made my way onto Kirby. Water was high in places, and the downpour was torrential, but people were slowly making their way through. It wasn't until I turned off of Kirby onto West Alabama that I began to get concerned: the water had gotten so high that only the very middle of the street was passable, and the rainfall was so heavy I could hardly see in front of me (the clearing that I thought I saw on my phone's radar app had, needless to say, never materialized). The further I drove, the deeper into the water I found myself. The water got to be so high that it was reaching the belts on my car's engine, causing them to squeal. It was only a matter of time before the water would cause my engine to stall out completely; it was at that point, coincidentally, that Southwest sent me a text informing me that my flight had been canceled altogether.

I was only a few blocks away from my office, but it was obvious I wasn't going to make it; I needed to find a place to stop and hopefully wait out the deluge. So I turned off of West Alabama and on to Buffalo Speedway, found a median opening at the street's highest point, parked and waited. I also took a couple of pictures:

The rain continued to come down, and the water continued to rise. I watched the curb of the median opening slowly disappear beneath the floodwater. Every time a truck or other large vehicle with enough clearance to navigate the floodwaters would drive by, it would send a wave of water crashing into my car, causing it to feel like it was about to float away. I continued to nervously watch my phone's radar app, and actually began to give thought to abandoning the car and sloshing my way in the rain and floodwater towards higher ground, such as a nearby building or parking garage.

Why didn't I just stay at TxDOT's office? I would have been high and dry there. Like I said, I was that idiot.

Thankfully, the rain began to let up, and I took a short video documenting my stupidity:

Buffalo Speedway drained relatively quickly once the rain stopped; before too long I was able to continue on to my office with no problem whatsoever. But still: I never should have put myself in that position to begin with. It just wasn't worth it.

Of course, as I mentioned in my previous post, our trip to New Orleans never happened. Southwest let us reschedule for later this month.

Venice underwater

A nasty (and deadly) storm has hit northern Italy and has made things rather difficult for folks in and around Venice:

In the canal city of Venice, rising floodwaters overwhelmed many of its famed squares and walkways, with officials saying as much as 75% of the city is now submerged. 

Venice's central St Mark's Square was closed on Monday afternoon, after the water level reached "acqua alta" (high water) of 156cm (5.1ft). It is the fourth highest level ever recorded.

Flooding is not unusual in low-lying Venice, but this flood is particularly bad. To give an idea of just how badly the city has been inundated, here's a picture I took from a gondola station along the Grand Canal at the Rialto Bridge last summer...


..and here's the view from the same gondola station during the flooding:

Stefano Mazzola / Awakening / Getty

See here for this and several other pictures of the flooding. Schools and hospitals were closed, and tourists walked about the city on narrow elevated catwalks.

As bad as Venice has gotten it, at least it seems to have been spared some of the worst of the weather:

Beyond Venice in the north, it was a story of high winds, fallen trees and landslides.
In the wider Veneto region, a man was killed by a tree and a volunteer fireman died in the north-eastern border region of Alto Adige, also known as South Tyrol. 

A 61-year-old man was found dead in a river near Belluno, Veneto, close to where his car had been discovered earlier. 

A woman was killed when her home was hit by a landslide and a fisherman's body was found hours after he went to check on his boat on a lake in Trento. South of the beach resort of Rimini, a kite-surfer aged 63 died when he was hurled against rocks. 

Across Italy six people died on Monday and further deaths were confirmed on Tuesday.

Yikes. Hopefully this passes soon and things get back to normal.

Ten years since Ike

Eric Berger remembers:

Anniversary Awareness: Ten years ago today we were watching the approach of Hurricane Ike, whose winds and storm surge pushed into Galveston on Friday, Sept. 12. I recall this time vividly, as I tried to grab a few hours of sleep in a darkened room in the Houston Chronicle‘s former downtown newsroom. Next door, at the Lancaster Hotel, a window blew out in my family’s room. I was powerless to help. Similar dramas played out across the region as the storm made a final landfall at 2:10am CT on Saturday morning. At the time, Ike ranked as the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history, behind only Katrina. It has since been bumped down to sixth, supplanted by Harvey, Maria, Sandy, and Irma. Unfortunately, the Houston region has yet to heed the lessons of Ike and enact any kind of surge barrier that would protect communities along Galveston Bay, expensive infrastructure along the Houston Ship Channel, or Galveston Island. The region remains highly vulnerable to a major storm surge event. On a personal note, a lot of the lessons I learned while covering Ike have made this site what it is today.

Our region's vulnerability is definitely something to always keep in mind, especially as we continue to clean up from Harvey and watch Florence bear down on the Carolinas.

Here are my blog entries during and after Ike, in sequence: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 We were fortunate in that we escaped major damage, but two weeks without power was miserable.

A year since Harvey

One year ago today, the floodwaters were just starting to recede and people were only beginning to take stock of devastation. As I one of the lucky ones who survived Hurricane Harvey relatively unscathed, I really don't have much to say about the one-year anniversary of the storm that dumped a catastrophic amount of water on the city and changed the lives of untold numbers of people.

Others, however, do have stories to tell, including Jeff Linder of the Harris County Flood Control District, who recalls what it was like to become the media's "face" of Hurricane Harvey last year:

Most major storms have a "face" that goes with it -- a person who carries the region through the event. In 1992, it was Bryan Norcross, a local meteorologist with a TV station in Miami when Hurricane Andrew moved across south Florida and in 1999 it was Gary England with a TV station in Oklahoma City that talked Moore and Bridge City through a catastrophic EF 5 tornado . I don't think anyone ever thinks they will be that person one day. I never thought that, but Harvey became that storm for me -- more the "blue" shirt maybe than the face. To this date I have not watched a single interview I did during Harvey and I did not see much of the news coverage during the storm. You have to stay focused on the information that needs to get out "as timely and accurate as possible" so people can make the decisions they need to make. I have always approached interviews from the standpoint of what would I want to know if I were watching from home: what is going to happen, when is it going to happen, and what do you want me to do. Those are the three basic questions I would want to know and I think anybody would want to know. The more I was able to get information out and answer the questions that so many people had, the better the decisions that could be made. In the end it all boils down to, I just did my job. I had information and provided it in a way that people could understand. If I didn't know, I said I didn't know. I never had a script unless it was an official evacuation notice. I would write important notes, facts, information on a notepad, but most everything else was in my head. I spoke with facts and would never speculate on topics and tried as much as possible to stay away from words like possible or maybe instead using likely or unlikely which commits more in one direction or the other. I knew people's lives were being devastated and information can be of great help to ease fears during such times. I don't know what it was or why I became the "face" of Harvey, and I really did not know how big an impact I was having until about Wednesday or Thursday when the volume of messages of support were simply overwhelming on social media, texts, and e-mail. I still to this day have a hard time comprehending that people I don't know would raise $26,000 to send me on a vacation. That money was instead used to help 26 different families recover from the damages of Harvey. Each one of those 26 people I would visit would have a story from the storm, what they did when the water was rising, describing what it was like to come back to their destroyed house, and how they planned to move forward. Some were simply in complete shock and disbelief, unable to comprehend how they would ever recover. I remember each one of the 26 people I visited, but one has stuck with me to this day. It was one house in Kingwood that had flooded with about 6 feet of water and had never flooded before. I remember walking up to the door and noticing neatly stacked novels on the front porch that had been clearly flooded and were beyond repair. After talking with the individual for a few minutes I asked about the stacks of books, probably about 150. She paused for a moment, clearly upset, and said those novels I have collected all my life and each one is autographed by the author and I just cannot bring myself to throw them away. It is the horrible realization of the loss of what can never be replaced that in many cases was so tragic.

One of those flooded out of his own home was former mayor Bill White:

For White, Hurricane Harvey began on Friday, August 25, 2017. Houston is no stranger to heavy rains, and neither is White: As mayor from 2004 to 2010, he governed the city through Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Ike. No small storms, yet as White monitored the news that day, and early rainfall projections began to rise from 20 inches, to 25, to 30, he realized this one was different. “When the estimates of the rainfall amount … went out of the range of anything that had been projected to me, had ever been viable when I was mayor,” he told me, “I realized that it was going to be pretty bad.” 

White’s home sits just above the 100-year floodplain on Buffalo Bayou. It’s built up on stilts so flood water can flow underneath. Yet in White’s 19 years of living there, the bayou had never swelled to such an extreme point.

That changed Sunday morning, when White awoke to a “murmuring sound,” like a river. It was water rushing beneath the house. He spent the next few hours moving what furniture he could upstairs, keepsakes and family photos into the attic. A recent tennis partner called, distraught: A close friend had died the night before, she told him, when she’d taken an off-ramp on the interstate and gone underwater. “I knew then that there was going to be lot of human tragedy,” he told me.

The water continued to rise. By noon, it had made the 10-foot climb to the deck. Touching the bottom layers of the house, the current had shifted from the almost pleasant rhythm of a river to a “rumbling sound, like a train.” “It was an eerie sound,” White recalled. “I was surrounded by moving water on all sides. It was like being on a boat.”
Within 15 minutes, the water found its way inside and began creeping up the walls. It began “popping” and “pooling” out of the floor sockets, like tiny geysers.

It was time to go.

He threw on wool socks, hiking boots, a backpack, and put his iPad, laptop, and some papers in his briefcase. The neighbors had called to urge him along. He found his hiking staff, waded ankle deep to his front door, and began his trek into the coffee-colored river outside.

Thus White—formerly the one to call the shots, to monitor the rescue efforts, to communicate with Washington—experienced his city’s most defining tragedy as a citizen. The thoughts roaming the mind of a flood victim are plenty: Is my family okay? (Yes, White’s wife, Andrea, was out of town.) Did I forget to move something valuable upstairs? (Yes, Andrea’s collection of cookbooks.) Where am I going to stay? (With a neighbor.) 

For a flood victim who happens to be a former public official, however, there is one question that reverberates above the others: How the hell did we get here?

White was able to restore his home after the flood. Others haven't been as lucky, including residents of the low-income, predominantly-black Kashmere Gardens neighborhood:

The Center for Disease Control ranks Kashmere Gardens among the nation’s most socially vulnerable neighborhoods, as determined by “degree to which a community exhibits… high poverty, low percentage of vehicle access, [and] crowded households.” In short: Hurricane Harvey continues to complicate lives that were complicated enough already.

The canyons of flooded waste are gone making ongoing struggles less visible. It’s hard to understate the extent of loss in this community of 10,000 residents. Based on City of Houston estimates, the Community Design Resource Center at the University of Houston found that a staggering 79 percent of all homes in the Kashmere Gardens Super Neighborhood flooded during Hurricane Harvey. Data from the 77028 zip code, which includes parts of Kashmere Gardens, show there were twice as many applicants with FEMA Verified Loss (FVL) as other Harris County zip codes. Just half of these FVL applicants received any level of FEMA assistance. Of those households “lucky” enough to get FEMA aid, four in ten still had thousands of dollars of unmet needs in that zip code. This substantial gap in assistance has been met in piecemeal fashion through an estimated 50 organizations and agencies servicing the area. But as Ms. Randle’s experience illustrates, securing help is a long and frustrating journey. 

A glance outside the car window is visual testimony to these facts. As the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Harvey approaches, while the canyons are gone, there are still piles of debris dotting the roadside. We park beside one and knock on a nearby door. Shirley Paley invites us into the modest two-bedroom home she has owned since the 1990s. Furniture sits in cellophane wrapping and a faint smell of paint hangs in the air. Ms. Paley is waiting for the contractor to finish final projects, but is praying hard that she will be able to finally move back in a few weeks’ time. “I’ve had to be my own cheerleader,” she says while mulling over the past year. 

Bam, Bam, Bam. Ms. Paley weaves her post-Harvey story in a breathless stream, each tragic turn of events followed on its heels by yet another. She sat through the storm with her 11-year-old granddaughter and 17-year-old special-needs grandson. For the first time, her house took on floodwater. Finding no temporary housing, she moved her family into her car in the driveway for the first few weeks. Getting her home gutted and repaired has been an uphill battle from start to finish. Volunteers offered to muck her home, but threw all of her personal items in an indiscriminate jumble on the curb. She found her grandson’s Social Security card and other important paperwork lying in the driveway. She sent them away, deciding to salvage important belongings on her own and managed the cleanout herself. A state-hired contractor began more intensive rehabilitation work, but their work was so shoddy that she was forced to use her limited budget to fix their mistakes.

The cost of remediating her home was more than double the $11,000 FEMA provided. Without savings to cover the difference, her only alternative was to apply for a $25,000 Small Business Administration (SBA) loan. But SBA deducted the FEMA payment from the proceeds of that loan, effectively negating the FEMA award altogether. She will now need to repay the full $25,000 with interest, making her monthly loan payment higher than her existing mortgage and more than doubling her housing costs for years to come. All this will account for the lion’s share of her fixed income. Even with the SBA loan, she has needed to find help to cover other Harvey-related expenses. Like Ms. Randle, Ms. Paley has been navigating an alphabet soup of charities and non-governmental organizations, securing assistance from YES Prep charter school, a local church, Baker Ripley, Texas PREP, and Northeast Next Door Redevelopment Council.

Last weekend, Harris County voters - or at least the ones that bothered to vote - overwhelmingly approved $2.5 billion in bonds to fund flood mitigation projects. These bond proceeds are a start, but not nearly enough; they won't fund a third reservoir, or flood control projects in surrounding counties, or the "Ike Dike" storm surge barrier. Flood mitigation projects, furthermore, will also need to be accompanied by a basic change in the way we build:

With recovery funding flowing to the county and city housing departments, the potential flood control bond and other sources aimed at rebuilding and improving the region's resiliency, Houston has an opportunity to shift what was a traditional engineering focus that built a city of highways and concretized bayous to an approach that works with the water, rather than against it, and that prioritizes community cohesion.

"The places where it flooded the most were not the same places where you got the most rainfall," said [Kinder Institute Director Bill] Fulton. "There is an interaction between the way we have built the city and the flood risk and that’s one thing we have to deal with.” 

But Hurricane Harvey brought attention not just to how the city manages floodwater but to how it functions on a day to day basis more generally.

The flood bond would go a long way toward implementing engineering solutions, many of which were on the drawing table before Harvey, but, Fulton insisted, they must be coupled with strategies that look to slow the flow of water, rather than channel it quickly to and through the bayous. Furthermore, new regulations should also be put to work to undo the development practices that have worsened and shaped the region's flooding in many ways.

"You’ve got to have traditional engineering solutions, you’ve got to have green infrastructure…and you've got to have regulations that keep people out of harm's way," said Fulton.

Regulations, however, have traditionally been anathemic to the region's powerful development community. Texas Monthly asks what Houston has learned in the year since Harvey, and notes that, when it comes to at least some of the region's developers, the answer is "not much:"

Others are just as happy to go on as before, building houses in floodplains, contributing to Houston’s urban sprawl—and increasing the prospect of more flooding. Exhibit A is the Katy Prairie. One proposal brought before city council earlier this spring required that new homes built in the floodplain be constructed two feet above five-hundred-year levels. (Post-Harvey research showed that 80 percent of the homes that flooded in Houston could have been saved if they’d been built just a few feet higher.) Then the Kabuki set in: builders claimed the rule would add $32,000 to the cost of an average home, while the city countered that it would be closer to $11,000. Mayor Turner argued that if the vote had “the probability of letting people know in our city and those who are looking to come that we are taking measures to be stronger, to be more resilient, then that’s positive for the city of Houston.” The city council voted 9–7 in a combative meeting to make the change.

A few weeks later, a big land developer and a big home developer went before the council trying to close a pre-Harvey deal to build hundreds of homes in the floodplain out west. Prices would range from roughly $200,000 to $500,000, which might or might not do much to ease the affordable-housing crisis. Turner agreed to the deal after they had met all the requirements laid out in the new ordinance. Opponents of the project protested that Houston shouldn’t be building in the floodplain at all. Turner stood firm, asserting that the passage of the ordinance showed that builders wouldn’t skedaddle in the face of tighter restrictions. 

In the end, the contest between flood prevention and growth had come to a draw. In Houston, that counts as progress.

The Houston Press lists eight things Harvey taught people about Houston. A virtual museum where people can share their photos and stories from Harvey is now online.

Why was the water so clear last weekend?

So I went down to San Luis Pass (located between Galveston Island in Galveston County and Follett's Island in Brazoria County) to do some fishing over the Memorial Day weekend. It wasn't the best fishing trip ever: I caught a keeper black drum, but everything else I pulled up was either a stingray or a hardhead catfish.

The big story wasn't the fishing, though; it was the water. As anybody who's ever been to Galveston or Surfside Beach knows, the surf water in this part of Texas is usually very murky. That's because prevailing Gulf of Mexico currents carry muddy water from the Mississippi, Trinity and San Jacinto Rivers towards Galveston in a counter-clockwise direction.

However, last weekend this was not the case. The water was uncharacteristically clear and blue. I took a few pictures of the water from the Pass, on either side of the toll bridge linking Brazoria and Galveston Counties:

 

So why the uncharacteristically blue water? The Chronicle explains why:

Dr. Tom Linton, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University-Galveston, has a theory on why the water was so clear over the weekend. 

His theory is that Hurricane Alberto off the coast of Alabama in the Gulf of Mexico helped set up a gyre (a large system of rotating ocean currents) east of the Mississippi that began moving the water in a counter-clockwise direction. Hurricanes can go in a counter-clockwise direction. 

The competing, existing Gulf Stream created a gyre west of the Mississippi moving in a clockwise direction. 

"So you got these two gyres acting like floor sweepers, pulling in water from the west and the east," Linton said. 

Much clearer ocean water from the western side of the Gulf Stream, namely the Corpus Christi area and points south, was brought up and began striking the Galveston beach. It all goes to show that a hurricane in the Gulf no matter how big or small can have a very wide-reaching impact.

The murky water that this part of the coast normally receives might be ugly, but the nutrients it provides are essential for marine life. Which may have been why the fishing wasn't so great this past weekend.

In addition to the clear water, I also got a view of an impressive storm moving over Galveston County on Saturday evening:


All in all, it was an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend at the coast, featuring rarely-seen blue water. Now it's on to summer...

Another summer is upon us

As both of my regular readers might have guessed, we've entered the annual "blog doldrums" here at Mean Green Cougar Red, which means posting activity is going to be light as we make our way into another miserable summer.

Which begs the question: when does summer really begin in Houston, anyway? Eric Berger ponders that question and comes up with the answer: yesterday.

What constitutes summer in Houston? There is no single definition. The summer equinox runs from June 21 to Sept. 23. Meteorological summer encompasses the months of June, July, and August. Neither of these time frames really capture summer in Houston, however, as it gets hot long before June 21, and stays hot well into September.

Speaking for me personally, summer comes when daytime temperatures are in the 90s, and overnight lows correspondingly warm and muggy. I’m afraid we might just be there, folks. We’ll have several days this week in which high temperatures might hit 90 degrees, beginning as early as today. And from a historical perspective, Houston is right on schedule—the average date of the first 90-degree day at Bush Intercontinental Airport is May 7.

This isn't to say that we won't get any more cold not-as-hot fronts (that will at least reduce humidity, if not overall temperatures) going forward, but it does mean that what has been a remarkably wonderful spring is coming to an end and we need to get ready for our annual dose of miserable heat. We can only hope that another hurricane won't also be on this summer's agenda.

As for my agenda this summer: another trip to Europe! We enjoyed the place we stayed (Schladming, Austria) two years ago so much that my girlfriend and I are going back, this time with my parents. Trips to places we didn't get to see last time - Ljubljana, Slovenia and Graz, Austria being at the top of the list - are also planned. But before we go back to the Austrian Alps, we are taking an Adriatic cruise out of Venice to Croatia and Greece. The Royal Caribbean itinerary stops at places - the Acropolis in Athens, Knossos Palace in Crete - I've spent my entire life wanting to see, and my parents want to see these sights as well, while they're still mobile.

I realize that I never wrote up any blog entries or posted any pictures of the trip two years ago. Hopefully I'll actually do better.

Another winter's end

A few days ago, Eric Berger declared that Houston "in the midst of transitioning from winter to spring:"

A lot of people have asked whether we are done with freezes. (My wife, a gardener, especially wants to know). We think so. Typically, the last freeze for central and southern parts of Houston (think Harris County and areas closer to the coast) occurs in mid-February, and for northern areas (think Montgomery, Waller, Liberty) it is late February or early March. This year it seems highly unlikely that the region will see a freeze for the next two weeks, which gets us to March. There are always outliers—for example, Hobby Airport recorded a freeze on April 13, 1940—but the odds at this point favor no more freezes for the winter of 2017-2018.

Between Berger's pronouncement, the fact that the crane flies are beginning to appear, the fact that rodeo season begins with Cookoff next weekend (oh, how I wish I could get my hands on some tent passes!), and the fact that local establishments are already advertising their crawfish boils, I think it's safe to say that, yes, winter is over.

If you hate cold weather, this is music to your ears. It was an eventful winter, with a snowfall in December and an ice storm a few weeks ago that kept a lot of us home from work for a couple of days. I know a lot of people are tired of the cold (although, as Berger notes, the end of winter doesn't mean that there won't be a few more chilly days in our future) and are ready for a couple of months of optimal outdoor weather before the summer heat sets in.

Which will be great. Then, come August, we'll all be ready for the chilly weather to come back again.

Harvey's final tally

Matt Lanza passes along these stunning statistics:

The National Hurricane Center released their post-storm report on Hurricane Harvey yesterday. These things are always interesting to read from a meteorological perspective. This one obviously has added meaning for all of us. You can read the report here. Much of what’s in the report you have already heard from us, but it is worth reading in full, as there are lots of statistics and images. Here are a few key points:

• The highest storm total rainfall that can be confirmed is 60.58″, which occurred near Nederland, TX in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area. A 60.54″ report was confirmed in Groves, TX near Port Arthur as well. Both of these totals, along with five others (most in the Friendswood area), establish a new United States record for rainfall associated with a tropical cyclone, breaking the 1950 total of 52″ in Hawaii from Hurricane Hiki.

• The previous Lower 48 record was 48″ from Tropical Storm Amelia in Medina, TX back in 1978. Harvey broke that record in at least 18 locations.

• Radar estimates of 65-70″ were noted, but cannot be confirmed.

• The spatial extent of the heaviest rains from Harvey was “overwhelming” and likely has never been matched in American history.

• Harvey was the second costliest tropical cyclone in US history behind only Hurricane Katrina.

• At least 68 deaths from Harvey in Texas (about half of which occurred in Harris County) were the most from a Texas tropical cyclone since 1919. However, zero deaths are attributable to storm surge, which is amazing for a storm of this magnitude.

• Highest observed wind gust was 126 kt (145 mph) near Rockport.

• 57 confirmed tornadoes in the Southern US from Harvey.

• Over 300,000 structures were flooded, along with over 500,000 vehicles.

• 30,000 water rescues were conducted and 40,000 people evacuated from flooding.

According to the National Hurricane Center, Harvey was "the most significant tropical cyclone rainfall event in United States history." Matt says that the report "still gives this meteorologist chills." It as was truly an off-the-charts event, as these jaw-dropping statistics attest. It has changed our lives and our region in ways that we are only beginning to see and may not fully appreciate for years.

And yet, we're still here. We continue to recover. Our region, its people and its economy continue to function. Life goes on.

#houstonstrong

Obligatory snow photos

In the wee hours of Friday morning, a rare snowfall fell across Houston. The flurries actually began Thursday night, and my girlfriend and stayed up late enough to see a few flakes fall. We went to bed thinking that very little additional snow would fall and none of it would stick. We were happy to be proven wrong the following morning.

Here are some photos that I took at my apartment complex Friday morning right before heading in to work:

(No, I can't take credit for building the snowman.)

So once again, Houston experiences a snowfall the December following a hurricane. You'd think these two weather phenomena are related or something...

Harvey videos

This final Harvey-related post was inspired by my (finally) downloading a couple of months' worth of pictures and videos from my iPhone to my computer. Included in these downloads were a handful of short videos I took from sixth floor sky lounge of my new apartment complex during the storm.

I posted these videos on Facebook so folks who weren't in Houston could see what things looked like during the deluge. It seems appropriate to share them on my blog as well.

Saturday August 26th: I took this video in the evening, about 24 hours after the storm made landfall and as heavy rain bands began moving through the city. Up until his point rainfall totals throughout the city had more or less been manageable; however, things would quickly get worse. It was only a few hours after his video was taken that Eric Berger introduced the phrase "super mega-rainball of doom" to describe Harvey's deluge.


Sunday August 27th: At this point, the flooding was at its worst for much of the city. The area around our apartment complex, however, remained relatively well off. There was an eerie quiet between rain bands - although we could hear lots of rescue helicopters off in the distance - when my girlfriend, her dog and I went up to the sky lounge Sunday afternoon. The sky lounge is located on the southwest corner of our complex, giving us good views of both Greenway Plaza and the Uptown/West Loop area.


Monday August 28th: The rain continues! Although by now it was coming down at a lighter pace than before, it still wasn't allowing flooded roadways to drain, or making rescue efforts any easier.


Tuesday August 29th: After four days of non-stop rain, the deluge had finally slowed to a trickle. There's even traffic on the Southwest Freeway again. Mercifully, the rain finally cleared out of the area overnight, and blue skies even made a reappearance on Wednesday.