It’s narrowly sparing Houston. The biggest risk to Houston at this point is probably mass power outages but even that is looking unlikely. Thousands of homes are likely to still be destroyed along the coast.

If the dice had rolled just slightly differently, tonight would have been a decade defining event as a major US city was destroyed. We just barely scraped by and avoided that fate.

Pour one out for Lake Charles, though. It's not a major city, but it's right in the blast zone of this monster storm.

Worse than harvey?

Yeah I was about to say they got hit hard in Houston three years ago and seem to have recovered fine.

Harvey was a much smaller slower hurricane that destroyed tens of thousands of homes due to flooding and was one of the most expensive hurricanes EVER. Houston would be in big trouble with a fast direct hit from a cat 5, largely due to lax building codes.

Harvey came ashore a category 4 storm then proceeded to loiter over Houston for days with hurricane force winds. I don’t see how it gets much worse than that.

I don’t believe that is accurate. Harvey’s winds caused little to no damage to Houston. Harvey was a rain event, not a wind event. Laura would have been a wind event, not a rain event.

Besides the flooding and people either stranded or stuck at their location for weeks, not a ton of damage. The O&G infrastructure is pretty secure there.

Prediction:

It won't be like Chernobyl.

Why?

Some things only happen once.

OK so you're just spit-balling and have no actual reason to think this?

Oh thanks :) now I can sleep safely and soundly.

It's headed towards Lake Charles, LA. Houston is getting just the outside edge.

It's a category 4 even outside edge will be bad

The east side of the hurricane is typically the dirty part. The west side will be spared most of the destruction. But it’s only narrowly going to miss Houston. Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Lake Charles are in for a very, very terrible night.

Why is that? Coriolis? Northern Hemisphere?

Last I looked, 20mph winds and a 2 foot surge for Houston. That's basically "tropical storm".

Lake Charles is facing something much, much, worse.

doubt.

wake me up if it changes paths and the eye wall hits and hovers over, without weakening.

My wife said today, if someone wrote a movie about 2020, it'd be unbelievable, nobody would buy it.... well until next year anyways.

On a different but similar note. If the exact movie Contagion, shot for shot, had come out next year everybody would hate it for basically being a slight exaggeration and following the news too closely with barely any originality.

Pandemic seems to be the most popular board game of the year. I don’t have figures for beer, but I suspect corona is doing well too.

Fiction has to fit conventions.

Truth does not.