surprising facts about the hurricane coverage
One of the surprising facts about the hurricane coverage addressed in the podcast is the amount of rainfall during the storm. It got reported that Galveston received trillions gallons of rain, resulting in catastrophic flooding. Precisely, the rainfall amount during the storm got approximated at 24 trillion gallons, which marked a new rainfall record for all other tropical cyclones in different states. This amount of rainfall caused massive flooding in southeast Texas, which many flood coordinators considered it as a 100-year flood (WNYC Studios, 2020). However, such downpour gets deemed to have a 1% chance of occurring each year, which implies that it does not necessarily happen after every 100 years. The forecasters usually use 40 to 50 years of data to project statistically the period in which a 100-year flood may occur (WNYC Studios, 2020).
Another surprising aspect of the disaster relates to the height of rain. From the podcast, I learned that Galveston received about 51 inches of rain, which intensified the city’s level of damage, such as the destruction of buildings and the loss of lives. The high degree of flooding in Galveston gets attributed to its geography. Since Galveston is a floodplain, it is subject to massive flooding. Generally, due to the amount of rainfall, the hurricane in Galveston is considered an unnatural disaster. I had no clear understanding of the various aspects of the cyclone that had struck the Galveston city. Specifically, I was not aware of rainfall’s height and the rain that followed the storm. However, I have gained a better understanding of these aspects from the podcast.