As of 10:00 p.m. Monday night, the National Hurricane Center places Tropical Storm Harvey 70 miles (110 kilometers) East of Port O’Connor, Texas and about 145 miles (235 kilometers) Southwest of Port Arthur, Texas. Harvey is packing maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 kph) and the minimum central pressure has dropped to 997 MB or 29.44 inches.
Catastrophic and life-threatening flooding continues in southeastern Texas and portions of southwestern Louisiana. The storm is moving toward the east-southeast at about three mph (six kph), and this motion is expected to continue overnight.
A turn toward the northeast and a continued slow forward speed are expected Tuesday and Tuesday night.
During this time, the center of Harvey will be just offshore of the middle and upper coast of Texas through Tuesday night and then move inland over the northwestern Gulf coast on Wednesday. Harvey will also be soaking Louisiana all through the week, resulting in some heavy flooding.
Baton Rouge, Lake Charles and New Orleans could all see periods of heavy rain, as well as tropical storm force winds and a few tornadoes. Parts of Louisiana have already seen localized street flooding since Sunday from bands of Harvey’s rains sweeping across the lower Mississippi Valley. One location near Lake Charles has already seen 10 inches of rain as of Monday night.
Harvey is expected to produce total rain accumulations of five to 15 inches farther east across south-central Louisiana. Rainfall amounts of five to 10 inches are expected in southeast Louisiana and coastal Mississippi and Alabama.
Harvey rainfall amounts a “Landmark Event”
Several Texas locales have received two feet or more of rain and forecasts are saying there won’t be a reprieve until the end of this week. By then, rainfall totals could see an additional two feet with isolated instances of 40 to 50 inches along the upper Texas coast.
“This is a landmark event for Texas,” FEMA Administrator Brock Long said, reports CNN News. “Texas has never seen an event like this.” Long said earlier this week that FEMA will be in Texas for years and the housing effort will be the biggest recovery effort the country has ever seen.
It is already evident that Harvey is frustrating efforts to mitigate the storm’s destruction, and combined with the inability to rescue everyone that needs to get to safety only adds to the frustration.
“The Coast Guard is continuing to receive upwards of 1,000 calls per hour,” US Coast Guard Lt. Mike Hart said Monday. “Today alone, the Coast Guard has rescued over 3,000 people. That includes both air rescues and rescues using boats.” And since Sunday, over 2,300 calls have poured into the Houston Fire Department, including 400 calls for rescue Monday afternoon, alone.
At a news conference Monday afternoon, Houston Major Sylvester Turner said he estimated there might be several hundred people still needing to be rescued, but it is fairly obvious from live video footage and the number of people taking to social media that thousands of people are still in need of rescuing.
