Storm in a tea cup: The weather thread

[Paul S]

This could be a hurricane Katrina event. Stay safe everyone in Texas!

[Lang Spoon]

Aye. Good luck Renart, and everyone else, even Republicans.

[Paul S]

Storm intensifying. Let's see what happens.

[anton pulisov]

My other half's gaff is in Port Aransas. Looks 50/50 now that the eye either grazes Port Aransas (heavy damage) or ploughs right through the place (total destruction).

Fuck you Harvey, don't mess with Texas!

Low lying Houston is going to get dumped in 20 inches of rain.

Donald Trump has fucked off for the weekend.

[anton pulisov]

This storm is insane. It was a moderate tropical depression three (two?) days ago. Now it's a Cat 4 hurricane.

Gulf water temperature is 31 deg C, pure rocket fuel.

[San Bernardhinault]

Good luck to your other half, AP. I hope she (and everyone else) has long since left to somewhere higher and drier. With a 8-12 foot storm surge, those barrier islands are going to be basically completely submerged for a while.

[anton pulisov]

Yep, left yesterday.

Watching the Weather Channel. This reporter on the ground in Corpus thinks he's commentating on a football game. Jackass.

Rockport and Port Aransas currently both praying that the other town gets flattened. That seems to be what it has come down to.

[anton pulisov]

With a 8-12 foot storm surge

The car was left parked on a 10 ft high dune.

[ursus arctos]

Current rainfall figures. Keep in mind the storm is currently expected to stay in the area until Thursday at the earliest.



Hundreds of thousands without power.

[Femme Folle]

Watching the Weather Channel. This reporter on the ground in Corpus thinks he's commentating on a football game. Jackass.

That would have to be Jim Cantore.

[Femme Folle]

I wonder if Texas evangelicals are saying that this is God's way of punishing the gays. Probably not.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm sure they can find some liberals to blame it on.

Houston hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1978. The current one is black, the last one is a lesbian.

[ursus arctos]

Well, Senators Cornyn and Cruz, who were leaders of the ultimately failed attempt to bar Federal aid for the victims of Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York, didn't even wait for landfall to plead with 45 for the assistance of those they've called jackbooted thugs.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Cornyn's media team were trying to make out they objected to some other stuff in the aid package.

They didn't say what the unacceptable "pork" actually was, so we won't be easy to judge if the aid to Texas fails their exacting standards.

[Femme Folle]

Maybe trump will try to get his wall paid for in the Harvey aid package.

[MsD]

Thursday seems an awful long way away.

[Satchmo Distel]

It could fuck up any last chance of a GOP fiscal consensus, even without the chaotic interjections we are bound to see from 45. Cutting taxes while whole large communities are in homeless shelters would look like bad PR, even to these shameless scumbags. Katrina magnified several fold politically.

[Satchmo Distel]

Best wishes to all whom this threatens. Nobody deserves this devastation.

[ursus arctos]

Indeed.

Time to remind everyone down there of the 700 million dollar cut to FEMA in his proposed budget

[Tubby Isaacs]

Not unlike the Manchester bomb going off, and people wondering why the PM had cut the police.

[Femme Folle]

It could fuck up any last chance of a GOP fiscal consensus, even without the chaotic interjections we are bound to see from 45. Cutting taxes while whole large communities are in homeless shelters would look like bad PR, even to these shameless scumbags. Katrina magnified several fold politically.

Yes, because I think this storm is probably going to affect more trump voters, whereas Katrina hit POC the hardest, so it's going to bring it home for a lot of Republicans.

[anton pulisov]

There are sailing boats parked on the main drag of Port Aransas, about 1 km inland.

[San Bernardhinault]

Do you have an update on your other half's place yet, AP? Or is the only info you're getting coming from the news?

[anton pulisov]

The eye actually hit Texas' leading research institute for climate and environmental change head on. The coastal towns are also home to hippies living in trailer parks and spending their retirement fishing and surfing. Unfortunately the trailer parks got completely destroyed in this storm. So yeah, there are dickheads like Ted Cruz in Texas for sure, but it is a very big state with a diverse population. New York gave the world Rudy Giuliani, but we won't hold that against them.

Some people were driving around Port Aransas making photos and posting them to the internet. The town is in a total mess, but almost all permanent structures built in the last 30 years (i.e. since new building codes came in) seem to be mostly intact. So hopefully the good lady's place (built 2002) will be OK. The town of Rockport is in a much worse state and seems to be the "Ground Zero". The eye passed right through there, so they got the eye wall twice. The local police there actually used the calm period of the eye of the storm to rush people to safety.

The most bizarre photo I saw was the local liquor store in Port Aransas, where all four walls and roof seem to have completely vanished. They must have been lifted away and deposited somewhere else. But all the shelves still remain, with most of the bottles still sitting on the shelves, nicely arranged. Crazy.

[ursus arctos]

The mayor of Rockport asked anyone who wasn't evacuating to write their Social Security number on their arm so as to expedite the post-storm identification process.

The big danger now is flooding. The Houston Police had to rescue a couple of dozen people last night who went out to gawp in their cars and got stranded in water.