Overdevelopment in Houston a huge reason for catastrophic storms

Urban heat islands are a legit thing, but they are a legit thing in every other city in the world. I'm sure they exacerbate the issue, but since every other metropolitan area in the world, including one at similar latitudes isn't flooding out, and all urban areas have heat islands and hurricanes in the US are generated by weather conditions in the Mid-Atlantic, I think there are plenty of reasons to not take this too seriously as a "cause"' of anything. I absolutely buy that it is a secondary modulating factor.

It's just not proof that global warming is a hoax, or anything like that. I'd guess that the concrete preventing absorption of water is a much bigger deal than heat retention and wind inhibition increasing rainfall as a flooding factor, and everybody already is pretty clear that that is an issue.

 

I know about the theory. The claim here is that it is a huge reason for catastrophic flooding. That's a real reach and I haven't seen any evidence of that.

 

I think the language from the professor was "significantly more" which -- since it is an academic -- I understand to mean "a large enough delta that it is statistically significant and not just noise in the dataset." OP's thread title is probably claiming too much, but not the article.

 

Delete: Wrong thread

 

I just can't believe that a few tall building would induce more rain. Perhaps the overall urban landscape disrupts the wind more than a field of corn. I would have thought the heat from a city (all the concrete) would have more impact in inducing more rain through greater convection in a storm.

If it were true, than Houston would have received more rainfall than the outer suburbs. Actually the area that was on the storms approach would get more rain and the area behind the city would get less as the air would subside and thus produce less rain. But that might be the effect of the heat a city traps more than the skyscrapers which because of the Bernoulli principle, most of the air will just go around the building at a higher velocity

 

This is one of the rare instances where I agree with you 100%.