New state-funded website provides flood risk analysis as hurricane season comes to an end
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season officially ends this week. It was another record-breaking season, even after a mid-season lull in activity. There were 18 named storms, 11 of which became hurricanes, and five intensified to major hurricanes.
Five storms also made landfall in the United States this season, all along the Gulf Coast. The first was Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall near Matagorda Bay in southeast Texas during the early morning hours of July 8. Beryl brought hurricane-force winds and flash flooding to much of the region on the day of landfall, but it was the lingering power outages that many remembered being the worst impact of the storm.
"Beryl was primarily a wind and rain event. But a catastrophic surge event with rapid intensification aimed at this area versus the Big Bend to Florida had me up at night," Dr. Sam Brody, director of the Institute for a Disaster Resilient Texas, said.
Dr. Brody recalls how he felt after Beryl when Hurricane Helene charged towards Florida this past September, knowing all too well that Houston luckily escaped another catastrophic storm.
ABC13 Meteorologist Elyse Smith spoke to Dr. Brody last year on the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Ike. Dr. Brody has been a constant advocate for the Coastal Spine project, also known as the Ike Dike. The project is still facing hurdles in Congress regarding funding and approval. All the while, nearly two decades after Ike, southeast Texas remains vulnerable to hurricanes and their destructive and deadly surge.
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In the meantime, his Institute for a Disaster Resilient Texas team has developed a new program to help Texans better understand their flood risk in heavy rain events. It's called Buyer's Aware, a state-funded website that shows street-level data on how vulnerable a specific property is to flooding.
"Anyone can put in an address or click on a parcel and get a risk score and risk report for fire and floods for 41 counties across Texas, which are the 41 counties most affected by Hurricane Harvey," described Dr. Brody.
Additionally, this tool isn't based on the FEMA hundred-year floodplain, so it could be more effective at showing real-time risk.
"The goal is not to necessarily dissuade people from buying certain properties. It's to provide the information that if you do buy the property or rent the property, you know the risk and you know what you can do to mitigate that risk," Dr. Brody added.
Since 1972, over half of all flood claims in the Houston area have been outside of those designated FEMA flood boundaries. As southeast Texas grows in size and population, urban development will continue to shape and change the flood risk in the region.
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