Disaster

The US Army Corps of Engineers began releasing water into the Buffalo Bayou - the main body of water running through Houston - from two flood-control dams whose water level has risen too rapidly, a move that will flood thousands of nearby homes. Emergency workers said they began to release water from the Addicks and Barker dams located 17 miles west of downtown Houston early Monday to prevent uncontrollable flooding of the Houston metropolitan area from torrential rains released by Tropical Storm Harvey, according to ABC News.

Moments ago, in response to the devastation from hurricane Harvey, Texas Governor Abbott announced he is activating the entire Texas National Guard, bringing the total number of deployed guardsman to roughly 12,000. These National Guardsman will assist in the ongoing search and rescue effort for any Texans in immediate danger, and will be heavily involved in the extensive recovery effort in the aftermath of the storm.

Based on the number of people affected, amount of water involved, and other factors, meteorologists have warned, there may be no parallel available to any other rainstorm in U.S. history as Mashable's Andrew Freeman reports Tropical Storm Harvey has dropped more than 11 trillion gallons of water on Texas, triggering catastrophic, unprecedented flooding in the Houston area.

In response to the historic flooding in Texas, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (i.e. FEMA) was quoted by CNN saying that his agency is gearing up for a years-long effort to help the recovery from the damage wrought by Hurricane Harvey. "FEMA is going to be there for years," administrator Brock Long said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." He said that "this disaster is going to be a landmark event."

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Courtesy of Weather Channel weather producer, Matthew Sitkowski, here is a photo of what Houston's East Loop at Market Street on the I-610 looks like right now. As Sitkowski says, "this image and the forecast of what is still to fall.... This is surreal." He is right: we added a photo of the same location from February 2016 to show the "before and after." Here is the result:

The following time-lapse video shows the Buffalo Bayou next to Houston rising over the past day...