hurricane coming...

Every time I look at the news for, well, news, it just reiterates what *might* happen. But what *is* happening? Rain, high winds and power outages, but nothing serious (yet)?

― Josh in Chicago

MSNBC and NBC have reporters on the ground; I've got the former on.

Those are live reports/TV news, then, right? I was just looking at "print."

Terrible breaking news on top of weather.com: "Matthew Kills 1, 650,000+ In The Dark." Scans like it killed 1,650,000.

weather.com is the worst with their clickbait. They've even toned it down and it's still bad.

my god Bryan Norcross has aged

yeah weather.com is still saying "ONE SMALL SHIFT COULD BE CATASTROPHIC", which, while that's true, at this point the storm is here, y'know.

our local networks have finally toned down the rhetoric. I only use NHC's website, Weather Underground, and Mike's Weather Page (minus reading the comments) because they share just the pertinent facts without saying emotional, subjective crap like "greatest threat we've ever faced" or using "this is the worst case scenario" to describe three very different developments over the span of a day.

People already bitching about how the NHC got it wrong, when it was actually a really good forecast, stayed in the cone, and they always made clear in their Discussions that it was impossible to pinpoint predict the path on a coast-hugger, and they had to hedge their bets on the west/east movement based on what the Euro and GFS models were saying to prevent loss of life. can't believe how many assholes (fortunately nobody I know personally) going on about how overblown the storm is while it's still here and while the coast is getting its ass kicked right now.

y'know, be happy that you're on the internet to bitch about it...

the problem with Shep's forecast was, while he was clearly talking about a very specific part of Brevard county, and only if the storm shifted 20 miles inland, everybody took it to mean that he told all of Florida they were going to die. civilians don't hear what is actually said with storm forecasts, esp when the networks are covering such a large area that people conflate forecasts for another area for their own.

now it's become a meme already

I'm happy with NHC's forecasts. MDC never got a hurricane warning, and even Broward County was told late Wednesday night that its chances of getting hurricane force winds was dropping as Matthew headed northwest. The storm's gotten picked up by the jet stream -- exactly as NHC said it would.

Smith was in New Orleans for Katrina and worked in Florida for a while, which I'm sure molded his thinking

yep. their wind probability forecast was pretty on the money too - I found myself glued to it.

xpost yeah, he wasn't wrong, but I can tell the locals misread him, as friends of mine already posting "Hey Shep, we're alive, unlike what you predicted", when that's not what he said.

then you see the interviews w/ people who didn't evacuate and their roof is coming off and they're calling emergency services who can't come and you kinda get why.

someone that was a farmer posted 75% of their crops got destroyed - definitely people getting legit fucked by the storm, still, unfortunately.

My sister in honeymooning in the Keys right now, which luckily is a bit west of the hurricane and so the worst they're having to endure is some bad weather and bars being closed. But we're getting some worried calls from friends.

reports from friends and family in Jax have been mixed, but largely positive, if not the usual North Florida 'meh' attitude about storms scraping by. Still paying close attention to how it unfolds

not surprising, as the way Jax is laid out your impact can vary depending if you're more downtown I s'pose.

latest Weather.com article: "Deadly Matthew getting worse; Water rising in Florida; Homes catch fire; nearly a million people in the dark".

God they're tabloidy - most of the title is correct except the first one (the storm is weakening, not getting worse, though effects can be worse in any county that's been hit with hours of tropical wind and rain)

it's really more that some places are just getting it for the first time.

first US death reported from the storm - not sure where it occurred

Jax: here comes the flooding.

Flash Flood Warning for Duval County, Florida
Active for next 3 hours · National Weather Service

The National Weather Service in Jacksonville has issued a Flash Flood Warning for: Central Duval County in northeastern Florida.

Until 6:15 PM EDT.
At 12:41 PM EDT, Doppler radar indicated Heavy Rain across the warned area. Up to three inches of rain have already fallen. Flash Flooding is expected to begin shortly.
Some locations that will experience flooding include: Normandy and Riverside. Additional rainfall amounts of 2 to 3 inches are possible in the warned area.

I've gotten calls from family about flooding beginning on the ground floor of their home.

there's an amazing photo in this story depicting parenting i mildly disagree with

http://abcnews.go.com/US/hurricane-matthew-upgraded-category-millions-warned-storm-kill/story?id=42608853

pls forgive content from the free beacon, but, shep smith!

https://youtu.be/y_7WTfoWOMo

very guilty LOLs at that pic

they lifted our curfew already. never lost power here, none of the trees over, worst I had to deal with was my dad's snoring. relieved as all hell.

not surprised on flooding w/ Jacksonville, based on my last few visits there. very exposed.

woman in Volusia the first casualty, went outside to feed some of her animals and struck by a falling tree. :(

https://twitter.com/fierpanda/status/784780986643079168

haha

Rofl

by early saturday near Corpus Christi, TX, H-Harvey could make landfall as a Category 3 hurricane or higher — with winds at least 111 miles per hour . . . and more than 35 inches of rain. . . .

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/us/hurricane-harvey.html?mcubz=3

This one is dangerous because the storm track is for it to make landfall around Corpus Christi, drive inland a ways and slow to a stop, then reverse course and drift slowly up the Texas coast. That is going to cause massive, unreal flooding from Corpus Christi up to Houston. Rain prediction for Victoria (between Corpus and Houston) is something mad like 35 inches over a couple of days.

This is scary. I have never seen a rainfall forecast like this in my entire career.
Texas will be recovering from #Harvey for years. https://t.co/2l4agI5WfC

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) August 25, 2017

My city is expected to get less than half an inch of rain up here in DFW, it's bizarre. I've never seen a storm come in from the Gulf that was going to stall so hard that it just didn't reach us.

wunderground has the best detailed coverage afaict, e.g.

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/hurricane-harvey-rapidly-intensifies-catastrophic-flooding-likely-texas

also this was published last year:

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

Houston is the fourth-largest city in the country. It's home to the nation's largest refining and petrochemical complex, where billions of gallons of oil and dangerous chemicals are stored. And it's a sitting duck for the next big hurricane. Learn why Texas isn't ready.

Yeah I would not want to be in Pasadena or Galena Park in Houston right now. Those floodwaters are going to be a toxic gumbo.

The areas of predicted crazy high rainfall totals are now edging into the Austin area and some of the models project the hurricane making it further inland. I laid in a supply of cheese and olives on top of yesterday's grocery story run, am going for apocalypse sushi right now.

"area and some" should be "area as some"

Now a category 4.

this nutcase is periscoping from the eyewall

https://twitter.com/Jeff_Piotrowski

I am worried about this but I need to sleep.

we're poised to get about a foot of water in san antonio this weekend and i have no idea how monday is going to be the first day of school

a friend near McAllen is OK so far, that's all I got

caek's link is bonkers

drove a friend home with the windows down, and keep asking myself if this was hurricane wind, or if this was hurricane rain. according to the radar, it is.

Of course my side of Houston is the one getting all the rain, albeit not in the nightmarish portions that are probably on the way.

This is some batshit storm. Ike was out of here in about a day and a half. Allison was a three-day weekend. This is predicted to last until Thursday or Friday, with the tropical storm reaching us on Wednesday morning.

Down to Cat 2 -- that's good, right?

It doesn't matter if it's going to linger for days

So it hit and did some damage, 200,000 without power, but now come the prolonged heavy rains?

Yeah. Feeder Bands: Hurricane's Asshole Little Brothers.

Getting steady hard rain up here in Austin now. A few big branches down in my neighborhood, one entire tree.

we're poised to get about a foot of water in san antonio this weekend and i have no idea how monday is going to be the first day of school

― seven mambas (m bison), Saturday, August 26, 2017 12:52 AM (fifteen hours ago)

school is not canceled on monday???

Just went through back to back tornado warnings. Rain's really picked up and is heavy now.

It keeps coming... a lot of LCRA rain gauges in the Lower Basin (southeast of Austin) are showing 9-11" of rain in the past 48 hours. This morning they were half that.

Stay safe all in TX

kinda surreal to look at the NWS site and see a Flash Flood Watch in effect for the next 96 hours.

we're poised to get about a foot of water in san antonio this weekend and i have no idea how monday is going to be the first day of school

― seven mambas (m bison), Saturday, August 26, 2017 12:52 AM (fifteen hours ago)

school is not canceled on monday???

― k3vin k., Saturday, August 26, 2017 3:17 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the rain in SA today wasn't ever nightmarish, but it's been steady. you can still drive and stuff. it just depends how much water is on the ground by monday and how much is falling out the sky. if it makes getting to and from school treacherous, they'll cancel.

Feeding bands moving pretty quick right now. Earlier tonight a tornado touched down in the burbs across the street from where my family had a store back in the '80s (and just few miles from where I was living during Allison & Ike).