Thursday, July 24, 2008

Hurricane Dolly Update

One of the first things I did this morning was get online and check the news. As of 7:00 AM Dolly was right over the Rio Grande river. Here's what things look like from a radar perspective.


Update: This is a later image from AccuWeather because the cut and paste (from earlier this morning) was changing as the situation changed. That was really cool but it wouldn't have given the historical info I want this post to have after it is all over. So this one is more current. You can click on this to see it bigger and this one shows the names of the towns.

As you can see she is sitting right over the river. What you can't tell is that Rio Grande city is right smack dab in the middle of her and McAllen is in the middle of the trailing green. My folks live about 3o minutes from McAllen. So Weslaco and all those Valley towns got a lot of wind and water. And it looks like they are still getting it. Corpus Christi was on the upper green edge, that inlet along the coast just above the top, and it got lots of wind and water too. The news report before I went to sleep last night showed a reporter in Brownsville outside in the rain and horrific wind reporting live as damage occurred.

Dolly downgraded to a Tropical Storm after she hit land. That doesn't make me feel much better. She is still dumping lots of rain on the south Texas area and the water she dumps above the Rio Grande Valley will flow down river to inundate that are even more. Talk about rivers rising and flash flooding occurring. Yep, I'm worried.

There is a really good article by the Environment News Service in Austin. It tells you what's been happening, lists most of the preparations, and lists what areas have a disaster proclamation from Governor Perry. One of them is Hidalgo county where my folks live. Here is a map of the expected course Dolly is going to take from KRGV Channel 5 web page.

As you can see she is going to continue up the river. That doesn't bode well for the area. I think that south Texas along that river will be in trouble for a while. If you want to see some more news, especially videos of the news coverage from the Rio Grande Valley local TV station here is a page that may be active for a while.

4 comments:

Maggie May said...

How are things going now! If you weren't so personally involved it would be really interesting to watch but it is rather scary! Hope everything with your parents is OK.

murat11 said...

Lee: I hope all is well with your folks. We've been in Port Aransas since Monday (some planned vacation time): lots of wonderful surf on Monday and Tuesday, and then a lazy day yesterday with plenty of wind and rain squalls and a very dramatic looking surf out the window. Nothing like what folks were dealing with to the south.

It was nice to see some rain here when we got back.

Prayers to you and yours.

Lee said...

Well, I just got off the phone with Mom and they have been without power for the past 3 days. And they still don't have power back. But they are alive. And the phone works. So if I need to I can reach them.

Yeah, you're right! I'd love watching all the wind and rain. Maybe I should have been a storm chaser. :)

Peace!

Lee said...

Paschal, you were in just the right place to get the excitement without the disaster. Port Aransas has a quaint charm all its own.

Thanks for the prayers. Mom and Dad are doing as well as can be expected I guess. They are alive and reachable. I'm sure that if it got worse Dad would come up here.

Peace!