![]() ![]() In addition to communication disruptions and power line surges, radiation hazards, orbital satellite degradation and oil pipeline corrosion are also impacted by magnetic storms. Magnetic storms around our plant affect earth’s magnetosphere, upper atmosphere and disrupt our technology infrastructure. The earth’s magnetic field can be disrupted by solar flares and storms that create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) damaging electronic devices, communication systems, power grids, and global positioning systems. Heliophysics is the science of space weather. Solar flares affect the ionosphere with magnetic energy disrupting satellites, communication equipment, and radio navigation. Space weather includes solar wind, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections. Another cheerful thought: Our risk of storm-surge flooding from a hurricane is one of the highest in America in terms of damage potential.Space weather describes conditions in the region of space close to earth especially the presence of electromagnetic radiation and charged particles emitted by the sun that can affect technology with the potential to endanger human life or health. Dallas, Fort Worth and San Antonio have a slight edge on Houston in the flash-flooding department, but it’s not by a wide margin, and Houston is catching up, as our area is seeing an increase in flash-flood events. And according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Texas sees some of the highest frequencies of flooding events in the country. The Gulf Coast clocks some of the highest annual rainfall totals of any region in the country. I s Houston more flood-prone than other major U.S. This year a weak or non-existent El Niño is unlikely to have a significant effect on hurricane season. La Niña, on the other hand, has historically led to somewhat more active hurricane seasons in the Atlantic. El Niño tends to increase wind shear over the Atlantic Ocean, limiting hurricane activity. Both patterns also affect hurricane season. A strong El Niño usually leads to a bit more rain and a few degrees lower temperatures during Texas's late fall and winter, whereas La Niña’s effects are the opposite. Unlike some other parts of the United States, Houston typically doesn’t see major effects from either of these climatological patterns, the periodic warming (El Niño) and cooling (La Niña) of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Image: Shutterstock H ow do El Niño and La Niña typically impact Houston’s weather? When Hurricane Ike hit three years later, officials seemed to have learned some of those lessons. Third, there was poor planning on the part of local and state officials, who had no system in place for implementing contraflow traffic lanes or staging evacuations from the area’s most vulnerable residents to the least. Second, three days before landfall, Rita truly was a menacing storm, with Category 5 winds and a projected path that would have brought an immense storm surge into Houston (in, the end, it turned right, hitting the Texas-Louisiana border before landfall). First, Rita arrived just three weeks after Hurricane Katrina, so images from a flooded New Orleans were fresh in our minds. There were several reasons for the terrible traffic jam that occurred as everyone tried to get out of town at the same time. W hy was traffic so bad during the Hurricane Rita evacuation?Īnyone who lived in Houston in 2005 remembers Rita, and the nightmarish evacuation that took place in the days before it came ashore. During this period, nearly every single bayou and river in the Houston area saw waters rise above banks at least once. The totals were bolstered by six historic rainfall events, including the Memorial Day Floods (2015), Halloween rains (2015) and Tax Day floods (2016). This annihilated the previous total by about a foot-prior to then, Houston’s wettest consecutive 18 months had yielded a total of 106.68 inches. From March 1, 2015, through August 31, 2016, Houston received a total of 119.77 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service. ![]() Below, the questions these forecasters encounter most frequently: H ave we seen more flooding events than usual recently?Īrguably, the spring of 2015 through the summer of 2016 was the wettest period in Houston’s history. ![]()
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