Weather

As Tropical Storm Harvey heads back inland, slamming southwest Texas with another 15-25 inches of rain, Housting officials are reporting that the city's critical infrastructure is starting to fail under the weight of the floodwaters, and may soon collapse.

According to Reuters, roads and bridges in Houston have started to buckle under the impact of the catastrophic flooding in parts of the city. According to Jeff Linder of the Harris County Flood Control District, one bridge had collapsed and some roads had been damaged by the torrential rains.

Hurricane Harvey's historic flooding in Texas is set to wreak havoc on the auto industry and its insurers with analysts now predicting the storm could damage more vehicles than Hurricane Katrina.  In August 2005, Katrina wiped out some 500,000-600,000 vehicles but William Armstrong of CL King warns that Houston has about 5x more people than New Orleans did at the time.

Levees at Columbia Lakes in Brazoria County have been breached, according to the official Brazoria County website.

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FLASH FLOOD WARNING western Brazoria county until 5:45 PM. Brazos levee at Columbia Lakes has breached. All residents urged to evacuate now pic.twitter.com/7MZRyL3M3x

— FOX26Houston (@Fox26Houston) August 29, 2017

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.

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.