Harvey Floods Southeast Texas As Governor Warns: ‘the Worst Is Not Yet Over’

The devastating storm once known as Hurricane Harvey, already the biggest rainstorm in the history of the continental United States, delivered another punishing wave of rain Wednesday to Texas and Louisiana.

Five days after roaring ashore in Texas — leaving behind more than 24 trillion gallons of water, disastrous flooding across the Houston region and a mounting death toll that had grown to at least 37 people — Harvey made landfall before dawn Wednesday near tiny Cameron, La., and began grinding its way northeast.

Now a tropical storm and expected to weaken over land, Harvey’s immediate impact is not expected to pack the same destructive power as when it slammed into Texas as a Category 4 hurricane last week and dropped foot after foot of rain.

But forecasters said the danger was far from over, and alarming amounts of rainfall in Texas battered cities such as Beaumont and Port Arthur. The National Weather Service warned Wednesday that “catastrophic and life-threatening flooding will continue in and around Houston eastward into southwest Louisiana for the rest of the week. ”

The service also warned that “expected heavy rains spreading northeastward from Louisiana into western Kentucky may also lead to flash flooding” across those areas, imperiling a new swath of the population.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday that officials were “immediately deploying far more” members of the National Guard to southeast Texas in response to what he called “emergency conditions” there.

“The worst is not yet over for southeast Texas as far as the rain is concerned,” Abbott (R) said at a briefing Wednesday.

Abbott said the total National Guard deployment across Texas would reach 24,000 troops, with about 10,000 of them deployed there from other states. Read more at The Washington Post.

{Matzav.com}