Announcing itself with shrieking, 130-mph winds, Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Gulf Coast, dumping more than 40 inches of rain over a four-day period, submerging entire neighborhoods up to their roofs. In the days before expected landfall, the Governor or Texas warned that the monster system would be “a very major disaster,” and the forecasts drew fearful comparisons to Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest ever to strike the United States. In the aftermath, Harvey is being called a disaster of biblical proportions and it could eventually drop as much as an astounding 25 trillion gallons of water in Texas.

The city of Houston and its surrounding suburbs received the brunt of the damage, and many expect it to be the most expensive natural disaster in US history (1).  Many lost their …