Major Hurricane Harvey to grind, flood Texas coast
One of the most powerful hurricanes to hit Texas since Ike in 2008 is on its way. Hurricane Harvey is rapidly strengthening today and is currently forecast to be a major (Category 3) hurricane when it approaches the coast Friday night. Here's what it looked like on satellite at 1 p.m. Thursday:
The storm is large and rain and wind will reach the coast tonight; landfall is expected late Friday night.
After landfall, it will slow down and could move back off the coast for multiple landfalls, still causing catastrophic and life-threatening flooding as we discussed yesterday. In fact, rain estimates are even higher... Bernie Rayno said to me today, "Somebody is going to get 3 feet of rain." This is what the two major models showed this morning for the (over) 12-inch and 24-inch areas, which are large. In the end, not everyone in that area will get that amount of rain, but many areas will, and all areas are under enough of a threat that they need to prepare now, as should those in the map area above, which will get plenty of rain.
Hurricane Harvey may still be looping around by the middle of next week, when we could have a tropical storm developing off the Carolina coast and a tropical depression trying to form off the western Mexico coast, bound for Baja California! The European model forecast for next Wednesday is shown here:
