Time-lapse footage shot by a Houston, Texas resident shows just how fast the floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey rose outside his apartment – turning a parking lot into a veritable swimming pool in just a few hours.
Exavier Blanchard shot the video, above, from the window of his apartment in the Greenspoint area of Houston on Saturday night, just hours before being told he needed to leave the area.
Hurricane Harvey donations: Celebrities giving big to storm relief
“Got woken up around midnight and was told to evacuate,” Blanchard wrote on his Facebook page this past Sunday.
“I managed to set up a Nest [security] camera in my apartment window a couple days ago to watch the storm. [The video above] was a couple hours after I left.”
Blanchard told Huffington Post that he started recording the video around 9:30 p.m. Saturday night, capturing a time period of approximately 15 hours from that night into the next day.
WATCH: Globalnews.ca coverage of Hurricane Harvey’s landfall in the southern U.S.
-
![]()
Time-lapse video shows Harvey rains flooding Houston garage -
![]()
Harvey makes second landfall in Louisiana, residents urged to go into ‘survival mode’ -
![]()
Harvey evacuees forced to sleep on laneways of Texas bowling alley -
![]()
Louisiana governor tours shelter ahead of Harvey’s fury -
![]()
Harvey floodwaters fill evacuation shelter in southeast Texas -
![]()
Elderly residents rescued from Harvey floodwaters -
![]()
Harvey stretches Houston’s rescue crews thin
The footage is stark, as whole cars are submerged in a matter of hours and removing any sign of roads, sidewalks, or the grass.
Four days after the storm ravaged the Texas coastline as a Category 4 hurricane, authorities and family members reported at least 18 deaths from Hurricane Harvey. They include a former football and track coach in suburban Houston and a woman who died after she and her young daughter were swept into a rain-swollen drainage canal.
Authorities expect the human toll to continue to mount, both in deaths and in tens of thousands of people made homeless by the catastrophic storm that is now the heaviest tropical downpour in U.S. history.
In all, more than 17,000 people have sought refuge in Texas shelters, and that number seemed certain to increase, the American Red Cross said.
However, in a glimmer of hope for the hurricane’s victims, Harvey’s flood waters are beginning to drop across much of the Houston area, officials said Wednesday.
“We have good news,” said Jeff Lindner, a meteorologist with the Harris County Flood Control District. “The water levels are going down. And that’s for the first time in several days.”
-With files from the Associated Press
Comments