How much rain fell during Hurricane Harvey? At 4X4km spatial resolution, the storm maxed out at over 29 inches in a single day- August 26 and over a five day period it dropped up to 54 inches just north of Houston (see animated daily cumulative rainfall model at https://skfb.ly/6tzQw). This model shows the daily rainfall totals for the area between August 23 and September 1 with a vertical exaggeration of about 190,000X and some day-to-day overlap to aid visual comparison between days. Over the course of the storm, an area of over 70,000 square miles (larger than the state of Oklahoma) received five or more inches of precipitation over a 5-day period totaling 20 cubic miles of water 81% of which fell on land. Harris County (which contains the most densely populated areas of the Houston metropolitain area) received about 0.75 cubic miles of rain. All data used for this model and the calculations above are publically available from NOAA/NWS (https://water.weather.gov/precip/download.php).
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