Houston skyscrapers may have worsened Hurricane Harvey rain

[TexasTowelie]

WASHINGTON — Humans helped make recent devastating U.S. hurricanes wetter but in different ways, two new studies find.

Hurricane Harvey snagged on the skyscrapers of Houston, causing it to slow and dump more rain than it normally would, one study found. The city's massive amounts of paving had an even bigger impact by reducing drainage. Land development in the metro area, on average, increased the chances of extreme flooding by 21 times, study authors said.

A second study looked at last year's major Hurricanes Maria and Irma and 2005's deadly Katrina and used computer simulations to see what would have happened if there had been no human-caused global warming. The study found that climate change significantly increased rainfall from those three storms, but did not boost their wind speed.

Both studies are in Wednesday's journal Nature .

Houston was a literal drag on Harvey as it sloshed through, with the storm getting tripped up by the skyscrapers, said study co-author Gabriele Villarini, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Iowa.

Read more: https://ktxs.com/news/texas/houston-skyscrapers-may-have-worsened-hurricane-harvey-rain

[underpants]

1. A city without limits

That's the city motto. Build whatever the hell you want wherever you want. No zoning.
As I read here on DU - they basically created a big swimming pool for themselves and when the water came.....
One of my best friends did a triathlon there with a group of people he trained with. To a person they said it was a shithole.

[Quemado]

2. I lived in Houston for eight months in 1982

It was the worst time of my life, for personal reasons, but I remember the humidity and the traffic. Awful, awful, awful.

[HDCowboy]

3. Freeway Ditches

And it doesn't help they dug out half the freeways down there like ditches and then they wonder why they flood!