Hurricane Harvey Two Years Later
Two years ago, a storm made landfall in Texas and leftover $125 billion in damage and killed over 100 people. Hurricane Harvey, left a scar on the Lone Star state, though it might be more accurate to say it drowned parts of the state.
Harvey was at its maximum, a Category 4 hurricane. It formed August 17th in the Atlantic Ocean. From there it moved through the Caribbean, then into the Gulf of Mexico, and then made landfall on August 26th in south Texas near San Jose Island. From there the storm took a bit of an unusual path. The storm actually moved back out into the Gulf of Mexico, but just barely. The storm stalled and sat there for days. This brought torrential rains to the Houston areas for days.
Many cities and towns in the Houston area saw over 30 inches of rain, but some spots got even more. 60.58 inches fell in Nederland. All this rain made Hurricane Harvey the wettest tropical cyclone on record for the United States. The storm also had reported wind gusts of over 132 mph near Port Aransas.
This storm was deadly, killing 103 people. Tens of thousands needed to be rescued. It also left hundreds of thousands without power. 336,000 people were without power because of this storm. Over 48-thousand homes were damaged, 17-thousands of which had major damage. Over 1,000 homes were completely destroyed.
This storm also caused a large economic scar as well. With the storm approaching, oil refineries started to stop operations 6 days before the storm made landfall. This resulted in a fuel shortage.
Hurricane Harvey set a number of records. It was the first major hurricane (Category 3 or above) to make landfall in the United States since Hurricane Wilma did in 2005.