Pundits and politicians in the area in and around New York City are claiming that they “dodged a bullet” with regard to the recent threat of flooding from Hurricane Irene over that area.  Don’t be so sure.  Conditions surrounding NYC are dramatically parallel to the conditions surrounding the Coastal Plains region of Texas in the wake of Hurricane Madeline in October of 1998.

In that situation, the rains followed the course of the Guadalupe River, and then stalled between Austin and San Antonio.  The rain kept coming down, although up-river from the original floods — which had centered upon the historic city of Victoria.  Towns and cities that had already received more rain than they could handle then received even more water as the rainfall from central Texas traveled back down the Guadalupe and San Antonio rivers to the Gulf of Mexico.

The resulting double-flood was the worst since weather recordkeeping began there, some time prior to 1840.  Houses — some more than 100 years old, and which had survived numerous hurricanes — were swept away swiftly.  The lazy Guadalupe River, normally only a few yards wide in many places, grew to a width of four miles at Victoria.  The chest-deep water rose to 49 feet, and buildings in the city were under as much as 28 feet of water.

The width of Hurricane Irene was actually larger than that of Hurricane Katrina.  Thus, as Irene tracked straight up the Hudson River only two days ago, and then stalled for awhile over the northern part of the Adirondack Mountains, rainwater was dumped not only over the Hudson, but also over the numerous rivers (including the Mohawk and Delaware) and lakes (including Champlain, George, and the Pepacton and Downsville reserviors) that make Upstate NY so beautiful.  Those lakes and rivers feed the mighty Hudson.  And, those reservoirs flow through underground mains into New York City.  There is an enormous amount of water now upstream from the Hudson, which flows down to Manhattan Island and into New York Harbor.

Add to this the fact that several rare earthquakes surrounded the Upper Hudson just as Hurricane Irene approached, and the potential exists for all that abnormal amount of water to put pressure upon underground rock formations, thus possibly triggering larger quakes and even more flooding.

Thus, to an even greater degree than Victoria itself, it seems that New York City is about to experience “The Victoria Effect”.

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Disclosure:  I grew up in Victoria, Texas, until age 14 (in 1972).  I swam in the Guadalupe River many times (yes, there are water moccasins in it), and attended the first two Armadillo Festivals in the state of Texas.  Family deaths uprooted me, and I moved in with relatives in Upstate NY.  I have hiked and camped in the Adirondacks.  I have made parachute jumps at both of West Point’s drop zones, as my last USAF assignment was in the Lower Hudson Valley, where I also trained search teams for the Civil Air Patrol.  Thus, I’m familiar with the terrain of which I wrote.