HARRIS COUNTY, Texas (Nexstar) — As thousands of Texans in and around southeast Texas fight flooding over the weekend, local leaders and residents fear this round of storms may be just the precursor to a busy summer in the Gulf.
The Colorado State University forecast gives Houston a 45% chance of experiencing a tropical storm this season, and a 25% chance of getting a hurricane. Those chances are up from the typical 29% and 16%, respectively.
“Anyone along the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico should be expecting a busier-than-normal season,” KXAN chief meteorologist Nick Bannin said, citing less wind sheer and warmer waters. “When you get wind sheer, that can tear apart storms, but when you’re not dealing with the wind sheer, then those storms have the freedom to grow… those warm waters are just fuel for those storms to grow very quickly.”
Harris County leaders expressed confidence that they made progress to weather the floods than in 2017, when the historic Hurricane Harvey took 70 lives and caused $125 billion of damage.
“We are much more prepared than where we were in the Harvey timeframe. We have prepared in terms of our response, recovery, and in terms of our infrastructure,” said Harris County engineer Dr. Milton Rahman.
Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia expressed optimism for the billions of dollars in flood mitigation investment that he argued former state and local leaders neglected.
“We’ve gone through a generation of underfunding the type of investments that we should have been making all along,” he said. “Recognizing that we have the Port of Houston in our backyard, NASA, so much infrastructure that should have been protected for decades. And this county chose not to exert any political will to bring the funding to the table.”
One year after Harvey, Harris County approved a $2.5 billion bond for flood mitigation. Some say this generational effort may take billions more.
“We’ve got to continue to advance flood risk over and beyond the pace of growth. So it is a big program,” Harris County Flood Control District’s Scott Elmer said. “There have been estimates, when we did pass the 2018 bond program, that you could be talking overall need in the tens of billions of dollars.”
At a briefing in Conroe on Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott directed Texans in need of assistance to report flood damage to the Texas Department of Emergency Management’s Individual State of Texas Assessment Tool (iSTAT) tool.
“Even in a heart-wrenching event like the catastrophic storms and floods we have witnessed in East Texas, we have also seen the resiliency of Texans who are willing to lend a helping hand to protect their fellow Texans,” Abbott said. “As rivers continue to rise for days, we urge Texans around those regions to listen to local officials and take the precautions needed to protect themselves and their properties. I also want to point out, it is not worth it to risk your life to drive through high waters. Remember: Turn Around, Don’t Drown.”