Harvey reaches far and wide
One for the record books: Almost 52 inches of rain
Tropical Storm Harvey has broken the all-time contiguous U.S. rainfall record from a tropical storm or hurricane, the National Weather Service said Tuesday.
East of Highlands, the Cedar Bayou gauge has picked up 51.88 inches of rain from Harvey, the weather service said. This broke the record of 48 inches set in Medina, Texas, from Amelia in 1978.
It’s just under the all-time U.S. rainfall record from a tropical cyclone, which was 52 inches in Hawaii from Hurricane Hiki in 1950.
Harvey is now drifting over the Gulf of Mexico about 95 miles south-southwest of Cameron, La., the National Hurricane Center said.
It will meander over the Gulf on Tuesday before making a final landfall somewhere near the Texas/Louisiana border, likely early Wednesday.
Harvey is then expected to slowly move northeast across Louisiana and Arkansas as a tropical depression from Thursday into Saturday.
As it spins offshore, the storm is expected to dump an additional 6 to 12 inches of rain through Fri- day over the upper Texas coast and into southwestern Louisiana, exacerbating the life-threatening, catastrophic flooding in the Houston area, the hurricane center said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, up to 30% of Harris County is under water, a flood official said. Harris County is home to 4 million people, making it the third-largest county in the U.S.
Amazingly, more than 6 million Texans have been impacted by 30 inches or more of rain since Friday, the weather service said.
Brief tornadoes may also form anywhere from Galveston eastward to just south of New Orleans, the National Weather Service warned.
As of 4 p.m. CDT, Harvey had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph with a few higher gusts reported. It was moving to the north-northeast at 6 mph.
Forecasters also were monitoring a system off the Carolina coast, which brought rain to the Mid-Atlantic on Tuesday. This system is forecast to race out to sea with minimal U.S. impact.
Still another system is being watched in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, which has a 90% chance of becoming a tropical depression or storm in the next five days.