Severe storm in Houston kills 4

[pixy0stix]

apnews.com/article/houston-texas-severe-weather-storms-d14447267de0a8900e1475a8ad7ed8ba

Severe storms kill at least 4 in Houston, knock out power in Texas and Louisiana

[abs]

Can confirm.

Scariest storm I’ve seen in my life. It was like a cat 2 hurricane with 100 mph straight line winds.

We have no power and barely a cell signal.

All very normal stuff I’m sure. I hope other Houston people are ok!!

[lilypad1126]

Our area was not hard hit, thankfully. My family who lives out of state woke us up with texts and phone calls b/c they were watching about it on the news this morning.

It looks awful out there, and it's scary to think this was "just" a storm, given the destruction and deaths. I hope others in Houston are doing ok this morning!

[neverfstop]

The pictures are insane.... There are still 700K people without power this morning (down from 900k) overnight. Most schools are closed. Tons of trees down, debris, roads blocked. The electricity provider website isn't even working to see if there is an estimate on power returning. Both my parents are still without power...

[neverfstop]

I can't comprehend how straight line winds break high-strength windows, unless there was fly9ing debris??

[Michelle]

Downtown houston at 1100 Louisiana (energy corner) was covered in glass. Conference rooms in those buildings are covered in glass. Centerpoint Energy, ironically, was the hardest hit there.

It was totally unexpected to be that severe and heavy hitting.

[Susie]

My assistant works remotely and lives in Houston.  She got word to our administrator that she's ok but no power, and no estimate on power returning.  The damage looks scary.

But no, climate change can't be real... 

[ellipses84]

It’s so awful. My heart goes out to everyone there. It’s difficult for me to read articles after what we went through there, but somehow I still get the school alerts that HISD closed so I knew there had been a storm. I used to work in a glass building on Louisiana.

[scm1011]

May 17, 2024 10:02:46 GMT -5 Michelle said:

Downtown houston at 1100 Louisiana (energy corner) was covered in glass. Conference rooms in those buildings are covered in glass. Centerpoint Energy, ironically, was the hardest hit there.

It was totally unexpected to be that severe and heavy hitting.

I work in Energy and all of my colleagues are in the office across the street (Allen Center). Its closed today because they lost windows =/ So scary.

[neverfstop]

They are saying 3-5 days to restore power...this may get really bad. Temps are cool today but supposed to be 90 starting tomorrow....

[Pom]

Between the floods and now this. Thinking of everyone there. Most of my family is in Cstat and my sister said it blew so hard there that water came in somewhere through seams or under eaves of her steel roof. 😳

[abs]

May 17, 2024 14:27:48 GMT -5 neverfstop said:

They are saying 3-5 days to restore power...this may get really bad. Temps are cool today but supposed to be 90 starting tomorrow....

I’m hearing weeks. Not good. Reminds me of Ike. We are at my mom’s house so we are fine but if it goes past Sunday then we will just be in the heat I guess because school. (If it isn’t canceled longer but most of the district has power. We just don’t).

[AdaraMarie]

That is so scary. One of my friends is moving there from CO and was due to get there this morning, I hope he doesn't regret his life choices.

[neverfstop]

The news/reporting on the storm has been really lacking...

Just saw this...
abc13.com/post/deadly-houston-storms-texas-weather-mayor-whitmire-judge-lina-hidalgo/14832550/

EF-1 tornado confirmed near Cypress, downtown Houston hit by 100 mph winds, NWS says

Based on the storm's path length and intensity, the ABC13 Weather Team has determined this was a Derecho event, which, according to the NWS, is a widespread, long-lived wind storm associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms.

----------------
These wind velocities are nuts!
spacecityweather.com/houston-what-the-heck-happened-on-thursday/

We had gotten very few damage reports up to that point, but the radar was indicating 110 mph winds down to about 2,500 feet. By 6:23 PM, radar showed 120 mph winds down below 2,000 feet approaching Oak Forest. Does all that reach the ground? No. But a lot of it can. It also made me gravely concerned for the downtown high rises.

[neverfstop]

www.texastribune.org/2024/05/17/texas-storm-photos-damage-power-outages/

[Michelle]

This is a pretty accurate depiction of how quickly it darkened in our area, and we have no damage to speak of, schools still open, etc where we are. www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRwoJ935/

[audette]

May 17, 2024 16:26:58 GMT -5 neverfstop said:

The news/reporting on the storm has been really lacking...

Just saw this...
abc13.com/post/deadly-houston-storms-texas-weather-mayor-whitmire-judge-lina-hidalgo/14832550/

EF-1 tornado confirmed near Cypress, downtown Houston hit by 100 mph winds, NWS says

Based on the storm's path length and intensity, the ABC13 Weather Team has determined this was a Derecho event, which, according to the NWS, is a widespread, long-lived wind storm associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms.

----------------
These wind velocities are nuts!
spacecityweather.com/houston-what-the-heck-happened-on-thursday/

We had gotten very few damage reports up to that point, but the radar was indicating 110 mph winds down to about 2,500 feet. By 6:23 PM, radar showed 120 mph winds down below 2,000 feet approaching Oak Forest. Does all that reach the ground? No. But a lot of it can. It also made me gravely concerned for the downtown high rises.

Oh, dang.  I'm in the area hit by the midwest derecho back in 2020 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_Midwest_derecho).  I had friends in a metro area that was not as heavily hit as some that were without power for over a week.  A buddy in one of the worst hit areas was without power for over 2 weeks, and had no internet access for well over a month.  Another friend in that area used to have these gorgeous trees around his property making it feel nice and private.  They were gone.  Either damaged in the storm, or cut down by the power crews trying to restore power (and the linemen were doing miracles...  it was just an insane amount of work).  The damage to crops was astronomic - it hit in August, and just flattened entire areas of crop to the point of little to no saving...

It also came on fast - faster than normal storms here, and fast enough that the warnings did not really keep up with it.  I ended up stuck out in an outbuilding at work, because by the time we realized how bad the storm was, it was too late to go across the open areas to get to the storm shelters.


Anyways, cell networks had issues for quite some time after, because too many towers had sustained damage, reducing the overall bandwidth available.  I think we ended up with a bit of a delayed reporting on just how bad it was because the area was so hard hit, and it was such a large area that was so hard hit.

[abs]

audette that’s basically exactly what happened here. It all happened so fast that the warnings had a hard time keeping up. It’s been classified as a derecho. Power restoration is slow going and cell service is spotty at best.

For anyone keeping track this is like our 10th weather disaster since 2015 (flood events, tropical storms, ice storms, Hurricane Harvey).

On a personal level this just sucks. We are so lucky to have a place to stay but I miss my house. I miss personal space and electricity.

[fluffycookie]

My brother lives in Houston and is a first responder and they are saying jt could be weeks before power is restored. It’s scary how fast it happened. He has lived there 25 years and said this was the craziest he has ever seen.

[abs]

Power!!

They made a lot of progress today. Centerpoint thinks most outages will be resolved by Wednesday. That will be a small miracle.

[mcsangel2]

May 18, 2024 6:43:39 GMT -5 abs said:

audette that’s basically exactly what happened here. It all happened so fast that the warnings had a hard time keeping up. It’s been classified as a derecho. Power restoration is slow going and cell service is spotty at best.

For anyone keeping track this is like our 10th weather disaster since 2015 (flood events, tropical storms, ice storms, Hurricane Harvey).

On a personal level this just sucks. We are so lucky to have a place to stay but I miss my house. I miss personal space and electricity.

I was thinking that Houston has really been drawing the short straw for years in terms of frequency of severe storms. And different types of storms. With their population, it’s a terrible combination.

[abs]

May 19, 2024 11:06:29 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

May 18, 2024 6:43:39 GMT -5 abs said:

audette that’s basically exactly what happened here. It all happened so fast that the warnings had a hard time keeping up. It’s been classified as a derecho. Power restoration is slow going and cell service is spotty at best.

For anyone keeping track this is like our 10th weather disaster since 2015 (flood events, tropical storms, ice storms, Hurricane Harvey).

On a personal level this just sucks. We are so lucky to have a place to stay but I miss my house. I miss personal space and electricity.

I was thinking that Houston has really been drawing the short straw for years in terms of frequency of severe storms. And different types of storms. With their population, it’s a terrible combination.

Louisiana has had it just as bad. But yeah it’s been relentless. New and different billion dollar disasters yearly.

I’ve said it before but I stand by it. The gulf coast won’t be habitable in our lifetime. It’s already getting awfully hard to insure property here.

[Jalapeñomel]

May 19, 2024 11:06:29 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

May 18, 2024 6:43:39 GMT -5 abs said:

audette that’s basically exactly what happened here. It all happened so fast that the warnings had a hard time keeping up. It’s been classified as a derecho. Power restoration is slow going and cell service is spotty at best.

For anyone keeping track this is like our 10th weather disaster since 2015 (flood events, tropical storms, ice storms, Hurricane Harvey).

On a personal level this just sucks. We are so lucky to have a place to stay but I miss my house. I miss personal space and electricity.

I was thinking that Houston has really been drawing the short straw for years in terms of frequency of severe storms. And different types of storms. With their population, it’s a terrible combination.

My colleague studied the weather in Texas for years, and he’s been saying that climate change will hit Houston and Galveston areas worse than many other places in the US (something about the Gulf Stream). I can’t imagine how unnerving this must be for everyone in this area.

[fluffycookie]

May 19, 2024 11:06:29 GMT -5 mcsangel2 said:

May 18, 2024 6:43:39 GMT -5 abs said:

audette that’s basically exactly what happened here. It all happened so fast that the warnings had a hard time keeping up. It’s been classified as a derecho. Power restoration is slow going and cell service is spotty at best.

For anyone keeping track this is like our 10th weather disaster since 2015 (flood events, tropical storms, ice storms, Hurricane Harvey).

On a personal level this just sucks. We are so lucky to have a place to stay but I miss my house. I miss personal space and electricity.

I was thinking that Houston has really been drawing the short straw for years in terms of frequency of severe storms. And different types of storms. With their population, it’s a terrible combination.

Our neighbor had a layover in Houston several years ago when severe weather/tornado hit near hobby airport and she said it was so bad. She wouldn’t fly for several years after that.

[neverfstop]

Add this to our problems...Mosquitos seems like they are worse than ever

Gift wapo.st/4bKoPbC
Mosquitoes are swarming around Houston. The future could bring even more.
After severe rain washed much of Texas, residents are enduring another inundation — of mosquitoes.

Vigilant, the public health official, has heard it before. To many residents, every year feels like the worst mosquito year, he said, though sampling so far suggests mosquito levels comparable to those in 2022 and 2023.

It is next to impossible to fully count an insect population. But in tests last week, between 50 and 70 mosquitoes a minute were landing on staffers in some spots in Harris County, Vigilant said.

Harris County, where it is warm enough to find the insects year-round, is home to more than 50 species of mosquito. “Houston is never completely mosquito-free,” said Sonja Swiger, an entomologist at Texas A&M.

[abs]

The mosquitoes are so bad!!! But also to be expected after like 20 inches of rain in a two week span.