Houston’s vulnerability to flooding is getting worse.

The pictures from Houston are horrific, with water, water everywhere and roads flooded in so many places that the only way to evacuate people is with boat.  But is it unprecedented? Here are photos of the flood of Dec 1935.

Houston is built on what was once swampland and river delta-land leading into Galveston bay.  Houston is now a concrete and asphalt jungle as seen in these photos

There have been many flood disasters in the Houston area, even dating to the mid-1800s when the population was very low. In December of 1935 a massive flood occurred in the downtown area as the water level height measured at Buffalo Bayou in Houston topped out at 54.4 feet.

By way of comparison, as of 6:30 a.m. this (Monday) morning, the water level in the same location is at 38 feet, which is still 16 feet lower than in 1935. But Buffalo Bayou is still rising.

Buffalo Bayou at low level.

Here is a map of Houston in 1940 and 2017. Green area is undisturbed land, red area is over 50% filled with buildings, asphalt or concrete. In these areas no water is absorbed into the ground.

The drying up of what was originally wetland leads

to a rapid sinking of the Houston area. See map of Harris County of which Houston is a part.

 

 

 

Most of Houston has dropped about 5 feet  since 1920, but near the bayou levels has dropped about 10 feet. It is not ocean rising, it is land sinking, since undisturbed land is not sinking.

Vulnerability to flooding will only get worse from now on.

Genesis 41, Pharaoh’s dreams, Joseph’s interpretation and rise to power.

Here let me interject a story from my childhood. In Sweden at that time we had Christianity as a subject first thing in the morning every day in the lower grades. My younger brother was in first grade, the teacher always started with Genesis, and had come to this passage in the Bible. I was in middle school in town, and his elementary school was local. Anyhow, upon hearing the story he exclaimed “It is the same with my big brother, he eats and eats and is never getting any fatter” The story spread from our village to town, and I got yet another nickname.

It was an early dream of Climate change.

Climate Change is “best” solved by taxation of the abundance, but unlike today that abundance was not to be spent immediately, but be put in storage for the lean, dry years.

The famine is recorded in hieroglyphs, like in the tablet below.

The energy in Hurricane Harvey

A Hurricane takes energy from the ocean and releases it in the form of rain and wind. We measure hurricanes in categories dependent on the sustainable winds, but the wind energy is so much less than water energy. Nowhere is that more evident than in the case of hurricane Harvey. It had landfall as a category 4. At landfall Harvey generated about 6 million Megawatts  of energy or about twice as much as the world wide electrical energy produced, but it is reduced rapidly as Harvey is reduced to a tropical storm to less than a quarter of that.

This is a lot of energy, but it is dwarfed by the energy released in the condensation of the water vapor in the form of rain. This is about 800 million Megawatts, and continues in the case of Harvey for 6 days, since it got stuck near landfall and is constantly fed more energy from the ocean. This is about 250 times the worldwide electrical energy produced, and since Harvey lasts a week, that is the equivalent of about 4 years of worldwide electrical production.

The energy was generated by cooling the Mexican Gulf. Since it has been 14 years since the last major hurricane we were overripe for another major hurricane in the Gulf.

But that is not the only cooling Harvey provided. When the Sun shines over water 90 percent of all the sun’s energy is absorbed. The hurricane cloud is large, up to 500 miles in diameter or 200,000 square miles. The sun’s rays has an incoming energy of about 400 Watts per square meter, and the clouds reflect about 90 percent of the sun’s rays back into space rather than getting absorbed in the ocean or over land. The cooling effect of the hurricane Harvey from clouds is about 100 million megawatts during daytime  as long as the clouds exist. This alone is more than thirty times the worldwide electricity production.

 

Genesis 40, the dreams of the cup bearer and baker, Joseph’s interpretation and their fate.

Joseph is in prison.

Dreams are prominent in the Old Testament.

 

 

 

In the New Testament the importance of dreams did go away. The reference in Acts is from Joel 2:38 “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”  

The reference in Jude is a warning not to trust in dreams: Jude 8: In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings.

The importance of visions continues through the New testament.

Trances are mentioned three times, all in Acts.

 

 

 

The hurricane drought is over! A Limerick.

Forty three hundred twenty four days

since big hurricane entered our bays.

A new record for calm

in the hurricane realm.

We’ll soon enter a new cooling phase.

The last major hurricane hitting the mainland U.S. was Wilma, Oct.2005.

It was much bigger as a hurricane than today’s Harvey, but Harvey is unique since it will get stuck in nearly the same place for six days, causing unprecedented rains.

—This is not climate change, it is two blocking highs that prevents Harvey to go up the East Coast and rain out in the Northern Atlantic.

This means an earlier winter in the Arctic!