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2024 Hurricane Season thread of DOOM


Zonahorn

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Gonna be interesting in the next 7 days to see what happens with this tropical wave. Could stall, some models showing it heading west to NO now, but looks like Mobile and NW FL gonna get the business end.

Got a new water drain going in Saturday, and just had a hurricane kit put on garage doors last week. The generator is ready, and gas cans are already full from earlier this year.

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I remember the post-Harvey statistics... the average payout by insurance to homeowners who had flood insurance was something like $140,000.  The average payout by FEMA to homeowners without flood insurance was around $4,000.

As for flooding during this big storms...

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/article/In-Harvey-s-deluge-most-damaged-homes-were-12794820.php

Some highlights from the article...

"The new data supports those concerns. More than half of the homes damaged by Harvey were outside all flood plain designations, meaning that such building rules, had they been in place during Harvey, still would have fallen short of protecting more than 100,000 Harris County homes.

Along Interstate 69 south of the Galleria, a few blocks in the Uptown neighborhood have flooded every year for the past three, yet they still aren’t considered part of the flood plain."

"More than half of the structures damaged during the Tax Day floods in 2016 were outside the 100-year flood plain, similar to the pattern during Harvey."

"More than a third of structures damaged during the Memorial Day floods in 2015 were outside the 100-year flood plain, similar to the pattern during Harvey."

"“Not in a flood plain? So they say,” Blanton said. “But every time it rains we get flooded the heck out. Last time, I put my wife on the roof. I put my daughter on the roof. I put four dogs on the roof.”
 

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I did not have flood insurance for Harvey and I did not flood.  I’m about 2/3 mile south of Buffalo Bayou near Tanglewood.  My street barely had standing water during Harvey.  I did, however, have a ton of drainage flowing from a neighbour’s property into a drain in my front driveway near my front door and during the heaviest rain it backed up and water was about 6” below my front door.  That probably is not a “flood” under the definition of flood in flood insurance policies.  I assume that homeowners insurance would have covered water damage caused by a drainage issue.  All that said, after Harvey, I have flood insurance.  If the Addicks or Barker dam failed, I suspect it would flood as far south as San Felipe.  Upstream would be even worse than during Harvey when the dams held.  

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2 hours ago, HouTex said:

I did not have flood insurance for Harvey and I did not flood.  I’m about 2/3 mile south of Buffalo Bayou near Tanglewood.  My street barely had standing water during Harvey.  I did, however, have a ton of drainage flowing from a neighbour’s property into a drain in my front driveway near my front door and during the heaviest rain it backed up and water was about 6” below my front door.  That probably is not a “flood” under the definition of flood in flood insurance policies.  I assume that homeowners insurance would have covered water damage caused by a drainage issue.  All that said, after Harvey, I have flood insurance.  If the Addicks or Barker dam failed, I suspect it would flood as far south as San Felipe.  Upstream would be even worse than during Harvey when the dams held.  

Nope... that water comes in from the outside, I'm pretty sure your homeowner's insurance will laugh at you.

Under most standard home insurance policies, if water damage occurs suddenly or accidentally from a source inside your home, such as a busted pipe, it will likely be covered by your homeowners insurance. If the water comes from outside your home, it will not be covered by your standard policy. However, you can seek special protection from flood-related damages with flood insurance, which is a separate policy that can make a smart addition to your existing home coverage.

https://www.nationwide.com/lc/resources/home/articles/does-homeowners-insurance-cover-water-damage#:~:text=If the water comes from,to your existing home coverage.

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I'm of the opinion that saying "never" if you live anywhere in Houston is a mistake. Shit's always changing. TMC flooded like crazy in Allison, so they made big changes to the bayou system to protect it.....which then caused Bellaire/Meyerland to start flooding more often. Any time they make an improvement somewhere, and everyone says hooray - well, that water has to go somewhere.

Let’s go back to Tropical storm Claudette.

https://www.weather.gov/lch/1979Claudette

Since that storm, drainage district 6 in Beaumont has spend north of $250mm in flood control projects and the place still flooded in Harvey and Imelda.

But not my house, which drains straight into both pond Cs in the illustration, which were dug to a depth of 10 feet.

I don’t carry flood insurance, but my family “paid” more for flood protection than any other entity in Jefferson County, as every single area highlighted in green was taken from my grandfather via eminent domain.

Hindsight being 20/20, our attitude during arbitration in the 80s was “the gotdanged govmint is stealing our land” - but 40 years later we freely admit it was the best decision for the most number of people. I can’t imagine what would have happened had we developed neighborhoods and built houses on all that land.

What is now pond B was my private dove field/high school keg party and bonfire venue, so at least I had that. It was outside of city limits.

a3b6ded0b2a6d92cdb19d1ddce5d16f3.png
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Nope... that water comes in from the outside, I'm pretty sure your homeowner's insurance will laugh at you.
Under most standard home insurance policies, if water damage occurs suddenly or accidentally from a source inside your home, such as a busted pipe, it will likely be covered by your homeowners insurance. If the water comes from outside your home, it will not be covered by your standard policy. However, you can seek special protection from flood-related damages with flood insurance, which is a separate policy that can make a smart addition to your existing home coverage.
https://www.nationwide.com/lc/resources/home/articles/does-homeowners-insurance-cover-water-damage#:~:text=If the water comes from,to your existing home coverage.

Wind driven rain and the mandatory $5k annual TWIA premium say “hold my beer”
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4 minutes ago, BearSchlong said:

And now I’m thinking about lighting up a grand for flood insurance because this thread is making me paranoid.

Let me put it this way...

2015 Memorial Day storm dumped 11" on my neighborhood... 5" in an hour.  Our back drains understandably couldn't handle the water so some started coming in the weep holes.  Our back kitchen area was polished concrete so we just sat there and push broomed the water out the garage door.  Got the water out, mopped up and let it dry and cleaned the floor.  It was a stressful night.  I said, "F that!?  I don't want to stress about it anymore" and got flood insurnace.  Fast forward to 2017... my (since that night) sump pump kept water out of the house without any problems... pumped 70 gpm out to the street even in flood waters.  Water was not coming in from the back like 2015.  Come Tuesday they opened the floodgates on Barker Dam.  So, water came in all of our houses.  Sump pump can't drain an entire part of Houston.

I'll still remember watching everyone muck out their houses.  None of us were in a flood plain so of all the houses I could visually see, no one around us had flood insurance.  Yeah... its an extra expense but...

I watched that MF'er start to fill up... the water breach was less than a block from us.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1665598153513500

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1 hour ago, texasdago said:

Nope... that water comes in from the outside, I'm pretty sure your homeowner's insurance will laugh at you.

Under most standard home insurance policies, if water damage occurs suddenly or accidentally from a source inside your home, such as a busted pipe, it will likely be covered by your homeowners insurance. If the water comes from outside your home, it will not be covered by your standard policy. However, you can seek special protection from flood-related damages with flood insurance, which is a separate policy that can make a smart addition to your existing home coverage.

https://www.nationwide.com/lc/resources/home/articles/does-homeowners-insurance-cover-water-damage#:~:text=If the water comes from,to your existing home coverage.

That was a concern.  There could be a gap in coverage for bad drainage.  In my case, I’m pretty sure it would not have been a “flood” for purposes of flood insurance.  It was too specific to my property.  

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53 minutes ago, QuarterJew said:

They made more than a billion in profit last year (according to them), but they need to raise rates to pay off $1.5B over the next 15 years? Fuck their shareholders, they've already been paid. Centerpoint should be taking some money out of their rainy day fund to pay for the fucking rainy day.

"The company is on negative outlook with the credit rating agencies," Wells said, according to Houston Public Media. "We take very seriously the affordability of our service, and we are proud that the (transmission and distribution) charges that customers experience today are the same as they were in 2014. but we do need as an industry the opportunity to recover just and reasonable expenses so that we can continue to make the significant investments in our infrastructure that help mitigate the risk of these natural disasters as we move forward."

Wells, however, did admit that CenterPoint had earned more than $1 billion in profit over the previous year.

The company said it would seek approval from the Public Utility Commission of Texas to issue bonds to recover $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion of its storm-related costs, Chief Financial Officer Christopher Foster told investors and analysts on an earnings call this week. Foster estimated residential customers could see a two-percent increase in their electricity bills for the next 15 years to pay down the debt, which carries interest. 

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7 minutes ago, fattyflattie said:

You don’t believe at decade of stagnant surcharges is long enough?  I’m sure  infrastructure constructions costs haven’t  risen since ‘14.  

They've already been raising rates to pay for other shit like generators they can't use, and have been finding many other avenues to increase the rates to Houston.

So call me crazy, but that CEO's quote and your framing isn't entirely honest about a "decade of stagnant surcharges"

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1 hour ago, Captainant said:

They made more than a billion in profit last year (according to them), but they need to raise rates to pay off $1.5B over the next 15 years? Fuck their shareholders, they've already been paid. Centerpoint should be taking some money out of their rainy day fund to pay for the fucking rainy day.

"The company is on negative outlook with the credit rating agencies," Wells said, according to Houston Public Media. "We take very seriously the affordability of our service, and we are proud that the (transmission and distribution) charges that customers experience today are the same as they were in 2014. but we do need as an industry the opportunity to recover just and reasonable expenses so that we can continue to make the significant investments in our infrastructure that help mitigate the risk of these natural disasters as we move forward."

Wells, however, did admit that CenterPoint had earned more than $1 billion in profit over the previous year.

The company said it would seek approval from the Public Utility Commission of Texas to issue bonds to recover $1.5 billion to $1.7 billion of its storm-related costs, Chief Financial Officer Christopher Foster told investors and analysts on an earnings call this week. Foster estimated residential customers could see a two-percent increase in their electricity bills for the next 15 years to pay down the debt, which carries interest. 

Fuck ‘em. They’ve focused on shareholder value instead of infrastructure and resiliency for far too long. If things are so bad, they can give up their government granted monopoly. Think they will do that?

2 hours ago, utee94 said:

 

two_atl_7d0.png

 

 

Debbie Does Destin?

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The model runs for this storm are... interesting. Most seem to forecast a very significant stall but the location of the stall varies - just outside Tampa, over Orlando, SE coast of GA, just E of SC, etc. And then what happens after the stall - there are some not good options there that have this thing do a loopity loop and spit out on a due W heading across the GoM (though fairly heavily in the minority).

For being not THAT far out, there is a ton of uncertainty. 

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The model runs for this storm are... interesting. Most seem to forecast a very significant stall but the location of the stall varies - just outside Tampa, over Orlando, SE coast of GA, just E of SC, etc. And then what happens after the stall - there are some not good options there that have this thing do a loopity loop and spit out on a due W heading across the GoM (though fairly heavily in the minority).
For being not THAT far out, there is a ton of uncertainty. 
It's crazy because the two Highs are steering this, but only if one gets there first. If not, it will be squeezed out w/nowhere to go and just chill and dump shit loads of rain.
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Lulz I guess they decided to cut into their billion dollar profit margin some instead of jacking up prices again after all the backlash. What a novel idea, companies using their existing operating margin to cover unexpected expenses instead of pushing onto their monopolized market!

https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2024/08/01/centerpoint-energy-withdraws-request-to-increase-electricity-rates/

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On 7/21/2024 at 11:53 AM, Hate said:

I was out for 15 days after Ike. Ike sucked.

My mom's house lost power for 3 weeks after Ike.  Ike blew.

 

/edit: I did not see what page we were on.  Conversation understandably has moved on.  Sorry about that

Edited by dcbc
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48 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Lulz I guess they decided to cut into their billion dollar profit margin some instead of jacking up prices again after all the backlash. What a novel idea, companies using their existing operating margin to cover unexpected expenses instead of pushing onto their monopolized market!

https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2024/08/01/centerpoint-energy-withdraws-request-to-increase-electricity-rates/

Cute that you think they'll cut into profits instead of just quietly dropping plans to improve readiness.

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1 hour ago, Captainant said:

Lulz I guess they decided to cut into their billion dollar profit margin some instead of jacking up prices again after all the backlash. What a novel idea, companies using their existing operating margin to cover unexpected expenses instead of pushing onto their monopolized market!

https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2024/08/01/centerpoint-energy-withdraws-request-to-increase-electricity-rates/

 

23 minutes ago, tokamak said:

Cute that you think they'll cut into profits instead of just quietly dropping plans to improve readiness.

This.

Also, that first headline should read "Centerpoint decides on two-point plan: drop readiness spending to pad bottom line, and defer pursuing rate increase until all the hubbub has died down a bit."

Centerpoint will absolutely be back seeking a bigger-than-ever rate increase within the next 12 months, after everyone's attention is focused elsewhere and the memory of their shitshow has faded a bit.  A few things in this world are certain.  Your corporate overlords getting exactly what they want to line their pockets from your chosen state leadership is one of those rock-solid certainties.  And remember, as always, that's the system working EXACTLY the way you want it, and EXACTLY the way you've chosen.

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1 hour ago, Mother mopar said:

Models showing that hook to happen much sooner on the 12z run, which means a less powerful storm. 9b0f23a293d4f907f1f1d4f30c4bfe61.jpg

The new issue is that looks like they are initializing the storm way too far north. The current vorticity seems to imply a center that is off the SE coast of Cuba, not the NE as shown. That would make a pretty huge difference.

A lot of seasoned mets are calling this out as well. This may have a big shift on the next update.

Edited by dieucla98
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18 hours ago, HouTex said:

That was a concern.  There could be a gap in coverage for bad drainage.  In my case, I’m pretty sure it would not have been a “flood” for purposes of flood insurance.  It was too specific to my property.  

IMG_3095.gif.569014e5a1567462d154ff0864140e93.gif

You think that a homeowners insurance policy adjuster is going to rely on things like “facts”??

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