Football season is finally here. School was supposed to start early this month. Cooler weather is around the corner. But here in South Texas, we had a visitor by the name of Harvey that delayed everything. Harvey started out as minor disturbance in the gulf off of the coast of Mexico on a Tuesday. By midday Thursday, Harvey was a Category 2 hurricane headed towards the Texas Gulf Coast. By late Friday, Harvey made landfall east of Corpus Christi as a Category 4 hurricane with winds over 130 mph. Harvey headed about 75 miles inland to Victoria with wind speeds over 100 mph, stopped for a little bit, then backtracked on the same path back to the Gulf of Mexico. Once in the gulf, Harvey strengthened and headed toward Galveston and Houston, eventually making landfall east of Houston in Beaumont, Texas. Typical sounding hurricane so far.
During the four-day track from initial landfall to second landfall in Beaumont, Harvey was producing torrential rains on the east side of the storm, which is basically Houston. It rained for four straight days, 24 hours a day. By rain, I don’t mean a sprinkle, I am talking heavy wind-driven rain. At the end of four days, many parts of the greater Houston area had received over 50 inches of rain and some parts had received over 60 inches.
A whole year’s worth of rain in four days. The fourth largest city in the country was completely under water. People were trapped in their homes for multiple days because of road flooding. There were many reports of entire subdivisions with hundreds of homes completely under water. On late Tuesday, the rains finally began to slow down and eventually stop. Roads began to clear and flood waters were receding all over town. We thought Harvey was over. NOT!!!! All the rivers running in and around Houston began to crest and eventually flood. There are three large lakes north and east of Houston that were overflowing and the dams had to be opened to release the swollen lakes. There were also two flood reservoirs on the west side of town that became over filled for the first time in 70 years that also had to have the dams opened to prevent total levee failure. This water release started the flooding problems all over again.
The entire Harvey event lasted about 10 days. We still have some areas of town that are under water and some of our major roads are damaged due to the flood waters. Over 200,000 people have been displaced from their homes and the damage will take billions of dollars to repair. The Houston golf courses had a lot of cleanup from the storm but over 50 percent of our course were reopened within just a few days after the rained stopped. We still have a couple of courses that have water on them because they are located in the flood areas of the water being released from the reservoirs. Our national association orchestrated a disaster relief fund that many of our chapters made donations to. This money will definitely help our members affected by Harvey. In the many welfare phone calls I have made to our members, we feel like we are part of a very large family that really cares.
DONATE: Text disaster to 785-693-2593 or visit the Disaster Relief page.
No comments:
Post a Comment