On the anniversary of Harvey hitting Houston, we’re breaking the record-breaking storm down by the numbers. The first one: 8/25/17, the day Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a category-4 storm. Two days later, it crept up to Houston and then just stayed put.
By the time the storm moved on, it had dumped more than 50 inches of rain in parts of Southeast Texas, a total of about 1,000,000,000,000 gallons of water in Harris County alone. That is enough water to fill the Sydney Harbor 6.7 times and top off the Astrodome 3,200 times.
The most rain fell in Friendswood, which got a record-shattering 56 inches. The flooding that followed damaged up to 80 percent of the homes in neighboring Dickinson. Other hard-hit areas include Kashmere Gardens (79%), East Houston (76%), Downtown (70%) and Braeburn (70%).
All told, more than 300,000 buildings took a hit, along with up to 500,000 cars. That’s more than all the registered cars (447,000) in Rhode Island.
The storm didn’t just damage property; it also took lives. In Texas, 68 people died, 36 of those in Harris County as well as three each in Montgomery, Galveston and Fort Bend counties.
The scope of Harvey was unlike anything Texas had ever seen before and, we hope, will see again.