CATASTROPHIC HURRICANES: BY THE NUMBERS
Every hurricane season is unique, but a look at Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria helps explain why the One America Appeal came to life.
According to the National Weather Service, Harvey dropped a total 51.88 inches of rain near Mont Belvieu just east of Houston. No other storm in recorded history has dropped more rain on the continental United States.
Some estimates are that Harvey dumped 27 trillion gallons on land, which according to the Houston Chronicle is enough to fill the Astrodome 86,000 times.
Research by the Washington Post suggests that, if Hurricane Harvey’s precipitation was confined only to where rain fell during Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it would be 128 feet deep.
Irma is the strongest Atlantic basin hurricane ever recorded outside the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
Irma spent three days as a Category 5 hurricane, the longest Category 5 hurricane since satellite storm-tracking began.
No storm on record has maintained winds 185 mph or above for as long as Irma (total of 37 hours).
At least one rain gauge near Caguas, Puerto Rico, reported more than 35 inches of rain from Maria. According to the National Weather Service office in San Juan, Puerto Rico, rain rates approached 5 to 7 inches per hour on Sept. 20, 2017.
After landfall, Puerto Rico was left without potable running water. Waist-deep flooding, mudslides and winds powerful enough to uproot the concrete foundations of metal utility poles, impacted more than 80 percent of the Island’s power grid.
Rebuilding will take years. Despite this unprecedented level of devastation, the progress being made since the storm will rewrite national disaster response history.
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