Videos: Hurricane Harvey rages through southern Texas, and streets turn into rivers
The storm is the fiercest one to have hit the US in 13 years.
The city of Houston is facing major flooding after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, United States late Friday night. A video (above) shows the storm striking Corpus Christi and Houston hard, with howling winds at speeds of up to 130 mph, the pelting rain forcing the fourth largest city in the country to come to a standstill.
As a local resident tries to film the storm on his camera and struggles to stand without being knocked down, the wind threatens to carry him away. The National Weather Service tweeted, baffled by the disaster: “This event is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced.” At least five people have been reported dead, and a dozen people have been injured.
“You can see it for yourself, we are being hit by a significant bang from Harvey,” said a Houston-based journalist from NBC during a live broadcast, battling high winds.
The hurricane is being seen as the fiercest to hit the US in 13 years, and the strongest to strike Texas since Hurricane Carla, back in 1961. Footage shot from a drone camera (below) captures the aftermath of the storm – the streets turned into muddy rivers, with the cars submerged in the water. Rescue services in Houston have received more than 2,000 calls for help since the catastrophic flooding.
A taxi driver in Houston returned to his car to find a hawk taking shelter in the passenger seat. After many attempts at trying to get the bird to fly away, he decided to ride out the storm with his new friend.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released video footage (below) that shows the weather conditions in the air as the storm passed over the Gulf of Mexico on August 24.