HURRICANE FUCKSTICK 5001: MORE IRMA, MORE CANE

[Ironwood]

No-one said that.


 

[schild]

Yea, that definitely never happened. West, TX is like a fucking magnet for disasters and a gleaming beacon of human stupidity and frailty.

Mostly everyone looked at it and said "Cool, now how much traffic will this create on I-35?"

[Merusk]

Nobody here said it. It was, however, said elsewhere.

The best part of that whole fire, though? It was ruled Arson last year and people are now going back to old articles and commenting how they should be removed/ updated while ignoring that, maybe, possibly, building a residential area near a chemical/ fertilizer plant is a bad idea.

This one? Yeah awesome how reports are talking about the 'non-toxic' but "irritating" clouds and focusing on how the water will keep the fire contained. Because, yes, the fire spreading is the part we should be worried about when a chemical plant explodes. 

[Chimpy]

It really is only a matter of time before the US has its own Bhopal.

[Sir T]

Things are nice and calm in Tyler county.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/houston-weather/hurricaneharvey/article/East-Texas-county-tells-residents-GET-OUT-OR-12162456.php



"GET OUT OR DIE!" should be listed in all manuals as an example of short and to the point public broadcasting.

[Ironwood]

Holy fucking shit.

[calapine]

I just read that FEMA requested that the EU activates it's emergency mapping service (of the Copernicus Earth Observation programme) to provide damage assessments.

The results are also publicly available here (image is link):




The high quality maps are up to 9000x7000 px, so just example a low-res example of Houston, situation 28th and 30th August, here:

[calapine]

With apologies for my shitty GIF skills, I took Austin and Houston area maps and turned them into a Before - After comperison.

Even with the bad quality the difference is very noticeable:


     

[Morat20]

I can see my town from there....

Anyways -- 4 to 5 feet of rain. That's just insane.

Third or fourth 500-year storm in the last 20 years.

Houston's gonna have to eminent domain a bunch of underwater places if they really want to do some serious flood control improvements. On top of deepening bayous, increasing reservoirs, removing the idiots in the spill zones for the reservoirs,  repairing said 80 year old aging reservoirs before they fail, removing development alongside the bayous and turning it into parks or something that Houston can allow to flood without risking life or property, creation of more overlow ponds (hundreds of acres probably), marshland restoration...

Houston's got a century of shit design to fix.

Tens of billions in repairs, upgrades, seized property -- and at least a decade's worth of work.

[Brolan]

What's your call on the Houston area?  Is it an economically viable area that can get past this and move on?  Or is it like New Orleans where people just packed up and left?

[schild]

Houston will get over it. The city has double the gdp of all of louisiana, not to mention the nearby cities aren't total fucking shitholes.

[Morat20]

What's your call on the Houston area?  Is it an economically viable area that can get past this and move on?  Or is it like New Orleans where people just packed up and left?

It'll get over it.

Even if Houston couldn't on it's own, the whole country would force it. It's the sixth largest port in the world, it's the largest refining center in the world, the fourth largest US city, and has a GDP of about 500 billion. Bluntly, it'd fuck the whole country to let it fall apart.

It's one of the primary ports in the US, especially for energy (which makes the world -- and the US -- go round).

Houston simply doesn't compare to New Orleans -- you'd be more apt comparing it to NYC or LA.

[pxib]

This was published in December 2016 and it's an excellent read, IMO.  Gives a good explanation for why Houston is flooding so badly, in addition to the whole "flat and built in a swamp" part of things.

https://projects.propublica.org/houston-cypress/

That really is an excellent article, even if the flashy formatting drives me a little bonkers. Well worth the read.

[Raph]

This was worth a read: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a57276/harvey-longterm-effects/

[schild]

LET'S TALK ABOUT IRMA

OR NOT

LET'S ALL JUST DIE OK

[schild]

GET OUTTA HERE

[Trippy]

At least it's nice enough to leave us alone till after Labor Day.

[schild]

[Cheddar]

Everything's bigger in texas.

[schild]

i have never heard that

especially not 57,831 times in the last week

where did you come up with it

[Cheddar]

i have never heard that

especially not 57,831 times in the last week

where did you come up with it.

Meant second hit.  Being cheeky as getting this fucker my way would suck ass. 

[Morat20]

LET'S TALK ABOUT IRMA

OR NOT

LET'S ALL JUST DIE OK

I think the cold front coming in (which is weird to say at the beginning of September) is likely to block Irma from Texas -- that seems to be the general gist I was getting, that the weather patterns over the next few days will push storms north pretty hard.

That's what I got from closed captioning while playing Ticket to Ride with my nephew, anyways.

[Chimpy]

It is a week out from hitting the continental US so much can change.

I am sure Yeg knows exactly where things are going because his people commune with the weather gods, but us mere normal folks have to wait until things are 2-3 days away to know for sure :)

[Tale]

Weather Channel hurricane forecaster of 10 years says Irma's forecast intensity is the highest he's ever seen, calling it "another retiree candidate" after Harvey's rainfall.

[Jeff Kelly]

This is basically what everyone warned us about wrt climate change. This is why insurance companies implore everyone to do something. This is why even companies like Exxon are now wuillling to stay in the Paris agreement. This is why the Netherlands are spending 100 billion on anti-flood measures. THis is why the CIA and NSA consider this the biggest threat to security going forward.

So I expect Trump et al to not care and pretend it's just a freak occurence. Also to further cut flood prevention and rebuilding budgets and budgets to build levees and dams.

A second storm so close together. Good god. I hope this ends up well and everyone will be alive and well afterwards. But good God this is fucked. Proper fucked. Take care and for all that it's worth I hope everything goes well.

[calapine]

A highway in Houston.



Welp.

[Chimpy]

A second storm so close together. Good god. I hope this ends up well and everyone will be alive and well afterwards. But good God this is fucked. Proper fucked. Take care and for all that it's worth I hope everything goes well.

Irma is not close enough to ANY land to say with confidence that it will hit anywhere on the US coast, most models have it hitting well east of Texas so this is probably not a "second storm right after."

Hurricanes not long after others happen fairly frequently. We have just happened to have some fairly mild hurricane seasons the last few years so people forget.

[Brolan]

In this new era of climate change we can't rely on history about how storms get larger and sustain themselves. The rule book is out the window.

[Merusk]

Hurricanes not long after others happen fairly frequently. We have just happened to have some fairly mild hurricane seasons the last few years so people forget.

Yeah, we've had 5 years of mild, mild seasons. Since Sandy the ocean's been quiet, but this is more along the lines of what's been 'normal' previously. They're just a lot more powerful than they were.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_Atlantic_hurricanes

There's been a hurricane that hit somewhere in the US nearly every year since the 1880's.  2015 was unusual in that we didn't have a single one. It's been quiet.

The 1880s were the most active decade for the United States, with a total of 25 hurricanes affecting the nation. By contrast, the least active decade was the 1970s, with a total of only 12 hurricanes affecting the American coastline. A total of 33 seasons on record passed without an Atlantic hurricane affecting the country—the most recent of which was the 2015 season. Seven Atlantic hurricanes affected the country in the 1886 season, which was the year with the most United States hurricanes.[1]

[Morat20]

So in case anyone needed reassurance that not all people are assholes....

Today I was at a friend of my mom's. Their whole neighborhood (a hundred or more houses) was six feet under water, minimum. Every street was lined with cars, people in masks and gloves just shoveling shit to the curb. Sheetrock, furniture, clothes, mementos, appliances -- just irrevocably ruined shit. It averaged around 5 or 6 people per house.

It's not super hot for September here, but it's warm enough and it's humid. We were lucky -- the house we were in the AC still worked, though it struggled (the doors were all open). We gutted the interior walls to about six feet, carried endless piles of shit to the curb, etc.

And then there was this one guy. He wasn't from the neighborhood. He'd shown up to help a friend the day before, and they'd gutted the house by nightfall.

Today he was back. In his truck, the back of which was filled with coolers full of ice and water bottles. He drove through the neighborhood constantly, offering cold water to everyone. He was almost out of his second load of water by noon, and was planning to do do more runs by the evening.

Just because he thought it'd help the people who were busy trashing giant chunks of their lives.

And that was pretty fucking awesome.

[Abagadro]

There is amazing stuff going on down there. I've read some reports of what some of the rescuers have been doing and experiencing that is just flat out nuts.  I don't know if it is public yet though so can't really get into details.

[Cyrrex]

I don't know anything about that Joel Osteen guy that is splattered all over the media for not opening his TV church up as a shelter...but could that guy ooze evil lizard in a skinsuit any more than he does?  He looks like some movie directors idea of what the anti-christ would look like if given his own TV evangelism show.  I get the creeps just seeing his picture.

[Sir T]

Ya. I'd never heard of that guy before,  hadn't even read anything about him, and my first reaction on lookint at his photo was "who the hell is that sleese?" He really does ooze evil.

Anyway, if people need to look at a happy face, its nice to see a fire at a chemical plant enjoying itself.

[Morat20]

I don't know anything about that Joel Osteen guy that is splattered all over the media for not opening his TV church up as a shelter...but could that guy ooze evil lizard in a skinsuit any more than he does?  He looks like some movie directors idea of what the anti-christ would look like if given his own TV evangelism show.  I get the creeps just seeing his picture.

He preaches the prosperity gospel. They're all fucking lizards.

Seriously, anyone teaching the prosperity gospel is openly and shamlessly using his church as a personal piggy bank while telling it's members that. They're just too fucking greedy (the members) to realize they're being scammed, even as the fucker in the pulpit tells them exactly how it goes.

I can't really call it "vile and damnable heresy" seeing as I'm not Christian, but....it is.

[calapine]

I don't know anything about that Joel Osteen guy that is splattered all over the media for not opening his TV church up as a shelter...but could that guy ooze evil lizard in a skinsuit any more than he does?  He looks like some movie directors idea of what the anti-christ would look like if given his own TV evangelism show.  I get the creeps just seeing his picture.

His wife is a little lizardy too: