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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="434" data-total-count="434">HOUSTON — “We are way overdue,” my friend Alison said a few weeks ago, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up in agreement. If you have lived in Houston long enough, as I have, you know that big storms come with the territory. I can trace much of my history through weather crises — Carla (1961), Alicia (1983), Allison (2001), the Katrina/Rita combo (2005), Ike (2008), and now Harvey, which looks to be the worst yet.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="591" data-total-count="1025">We missed the wind here — the coastal towns of my childhood vacations are in tatters — but we have water like no one has ever seen. Earlier this summer, I looked into buying a generator (a must-have for hurricane geeks), but now I think I should have bought a flat-bottomed boat and motor. As I write, two friends have already lost their homes. The freeways that keep this city moving are underwater. People are stranded on rooftops with tornadoes forecast (“Stay out of your attic” seems to be the advice of this half-hour). The National Guard is on the way. And the rain continues.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="454" data-total-count="1479">In the days leading up to when Harvey hit, I was busy following the rules, but like most Texans, I was pretty sure the situation was being, well, overblown by the media. At 9:30 on Thursday morning, I bought the only water left at Target — it had a pink label and was marked extra pure for babies — and stocked up on ice, snacks like graham crackers and pretzels, and C and D batteries for the lanterns and flashlights left over from previous storms.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="312" data-total-count="1791">I did this not because I thought anything would really happen, but because I was procrastinating on a writing project. This made me feel as though I was accomplishing something. People started canceling weekend parties “just in case,” which always happens with heavy rains here and is generally a big relief.</p><div id="story-ad-1" class="story-ad ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent ">
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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="252" data-total-count="3024">I made a quick trip to the emergency room for my husband’s kidney stone on Thursday, before Harvey made landfall. Traffic was light. No waiting. It was like a holiday, when all the workers were anxious to get out to do their own last-minute shopping.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="506" data-total-count="3530">Things got worse when our governor, Greg Abbott, who is a <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/heres-what-every-governor-thinks-about-climate-and-clean-energy-473eee930193/">climate</a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/heres-what-every-governor-thinks-about-climate-and-clean-energy-473eee930193/">-change skeptic</a>, and Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, who is not, issued contradictory orders over whether or not Houstonians should evacuate. The ongoing war between Texas’s blue cities and our red-state government was continuing apace, even in time of disaster. Those of us who hit the road to escape Hurricane Rita in 2005 — and spent nine hours trapped on the highway — knew better than to follow Mr. Abbott’s advice, anyway.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="457" data-total-count="3987">Mr. Abbott also <a href="http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2017/08/25/governor-abbott-suspends-hotel-occupancy-tax/">announced</a> that he was suspending the occupancy tax at all Texas hotels and motels. But at a news conference Saturday, when asked about reports that people assumed to be undocumented immigrants were being turned away from shelters if they couldn’t show proof of citizenship, our empathy-challenged leader responded by saying, “I don’t know about that.” Only later did he decide he did know, after all, and no one would be turned away.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="208" data-total-count="4195">On Saturday morning, I made another emergency visit, this time to the vet with my father’s aged corgi, whose degenerative disks were acting up. The roads were still quiet; little sign of the deluge to come.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="366" data-total-count="4561">The real rain started Saturday night, just as we were finishing dinner. Suddenly, it was as though we were living near the Niagara Falls, the roar of the water was so loud. With it went my sense of humor, as over the next few hours, our house was pounded by the downpour. NextDoor was soon filled with posts from people asking for sandbags and help for the stranded.</p><div id="story-ad-2" class="story-ad ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent ">
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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="169" data-total-count="4730" id="story-continues-4">“This is going to be a fairly mild tornado,” was the warning on television news Sunday morning — not all that reassuringly since we were still urged to take cover.</p><button class="button comments-button  theme-speech-bubble-large" data-skip-to-para-id="">
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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="113" data-total-count="4843">“We’ve already registered with FEMA,” said my friend Amy, whose house was just flooded, for the third time.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="40" data-total-count="4883">At least no one is checking for ID. Yet.</p><footer class="story-footer story-content">
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        <p class="story-print-citation">A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 28, 2017, on Page A17 of the <span itemprop="printEdition">New York edition</span> with the headline: And Then  The Rain  Came. <span class="story-footer-links">  <span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html" target="_blank">Today's Paper</a><span class="pipe">|</span></span><span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp839RF.html?campaignId=48JQY" target="_blank">Subscribe</a></span>
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