Was all lined up but we lost the call. And couldnt get a hold of him. Theres areas that emergency crews cant get into and were keeping an eye on that. President trump signed a disaster declaration for texas as Hurricane Harvey made its move on the Lone Star State and Hurricane Harvey has been downgraded to a category three storm and made landfall about 10 00 p. M. Local time. Its been about five hours now and took the storm 56 hours to get to a category for status. Texas governor greg abbott, one of the residents that this monster storm would present in major disaster. Some comparisons are katrina which hit new orleans 12 years ago and at that point killed 1800 people plus devastation there. Check in with adam, meteorologist adam, hes keeping track on what is happening there. Its been about five hours now since the eye of the storm hit the land there. What are we seeing . In these last couple of moments, jackie, new information coming in. The winds are continuing to die down but we just went to a category two storm. We are down to a hundred miles an hour wind. Its not falling apart but shrinking a little bit. You can see the eye wall slowly getting smaller and these are strong winds getting up to that hundred and ten in places like fort lavaca continue to deal with strong winds as well as victoria but its weakening in general and like Corpus Christi was in a very heavy rain its falling out of that and we getting just a bit. The other story is that it continues to slow down and will continue through the overnight hours. Moving now only at 6 miles and hours were not Seen Movement and the problem with that is anyone who is in the way of it rain follows and falls and falls because its not moving quickly and not pushing out of that area. It is starting to shrink down which is the good news. Weve also been dealing with the early hours of morning is a storm surge forecast. Weve been looking at these areas getting storm surges up to close to ten12 feet and mixing numbers coming in from six8 feet and is still opportunity for this to climb up as we see Little Movement of the storm so the wind on the east side of it will continue to pile up the gulf moisture, the gulf water, and thats when you see the storm surge. On top of that credibly heavy rain this is a forecast model of where the Tropical Storm will be traveling. Here in the next couple of days because it will be traveling that much. Lets put it in motion early on your saturday morning running you into sunday meandering inland getting more rain into the houston area but still not a lot of movement. I can run you sunday into monday, drifting back down to the coast maybe Corpus Christi getting more rain and then hovering right along the coast perhaps heading back up. At this point its tuesday and that the storm continues to spend in that general area. That gives us opportunity and time for rain to begin to pile up in the numbers get absolutely outstanding. Youre talking about numbers into the mid 50s inches of total precipitation in these locations and thats what this particular model is suggesting. The Weather Service is saying 4050 inches and high numbers that you dont typically see because they usually move on. This will stay put and it bounced back and forth on portions of east texas. We could see as much is 20 inches in the houston area that is still enough to cause major flooding issues. Again, i told you it will run inland of it. How far inland . We could see damaging rainfall totals from san antonio to austin especially if you talking about the eastern side those cities because thats the direction the system is coming from and thats where the rain will have more opportunity to pile up and thats where it will be doing so for next four or five days. Back to what is happening right now, a lot of rain, i want to point out stretching outside of the immediate area where the hurricane is running you up into the houston area and back over to portions of louisiana this is also under a tornado watch. We seen a couple of tornado storms spotted on the ground and portions of southern houston and that will continue to fire up. This is always the region where you see a couple spin up tornadoes and the conditions are still there and it is still hot and so a lot of energy there. I wouldnt be surprised if we saw a few more of those in the Early Saturday Morning hours. Jackie we are right in the middle of hurricane system, right . I believe it starts in the beginning of june and ends november 30th so we have about three more months of parking system. That is great. When you get toward the end of august into early september, september 10th is historically the peak of the season so were still building up to that. Jackie thanks, adam. Well check in later. Lets do a live look now with matt finn in texas. Hes moved from blessing about 100 miles southeast of houston in his latest is there. How are things looking for us matt . This looks worse, i think. Reporter we are hearing about the storm maybe weakening or slowing down in some areas but right now this is by far the strongest we have seen here. When we first arrived here several hours ago the water line behind me was five10 feet off the shore and now you can see it is engulfing this walking area behind me and bringing up some substantial debris with it. It looks like very large pieces of wood and logs, branches, what have you and behind me you cant see because theres not a lot of light but the water is now up in the grass area. Were talking about a surge anywhere between ten20 feet here because we first got here the water was nowhere near the shoreline. Emergency official folks say they worry about the storm surge here that would cause damage and erosion to the shoreline and these pathways and unfortunately it looks like thats what will happen. Very strong substantial wind for hours and theres been no relief and the water is extremely violent and the power has been going on and off all night long and the dock right next to me is now completely blacked out and it seems like the last couple of hours any light that was out there coming from a generator or some type of emergency backup but now it is completely blacked out into the left of me are several communities and they are also entirely blacked. Not seeing any lights in windows or anything like that. It would indicate that we have a pretty substantial Power Outages. We spoke to officials and they said this could potentially be the worst Case Scenario because anyone who decided to stick around could be without power for days. The town we are in right now is a fishing town, coastal town of about 5000 people and no indication that we could figure how many people decided to stay. The county that we are in there was a mandatory evacuation in the emergency official manager, county judge says about 36000 people live in this county and he thanks most of the people heated the mandatory evacuation and the buses left at 1 30 this afternoon or yesterday afternoon, now. So whoever is here in the coming hours and days will have to rely on themselves. Emergency officials said that if you decided to stick this out you are here by yourself and becoming more and more dangerous. Power is out that we have a storm surge and it is very strong wind and strong rain. Jackie matt, i know it is not easy when youre out there and breaking news and you have the sirens or wind or rain and you have the ocean wander pounding your face and try to focus and keep a thought. Youre doing a great job. We appreciate it. Please go to your car and get safe for another half hour and will check in later. Thank you so much, matt. Leland you will never be colder or wetter than you are after a hurricane. Randy is the chief of Public Affairs of the Us Army Corps of engineers in the galveston and joins us now by phone. Good to talk with you, sir. As we understand, the port of galveston is closed, 20000 or so cruiseship passengers either out to see or into other ports because of how bad conditions are in galveston. Big picture here, how long do we know how bad it is and how long so you all begin to try to bring things back to normal . Once the storm passes part of our thing is charge of restoring the waterways Navigation System and then we will be responsible for maintaining the get navigation texas coastline. Leland give us an idea of what damage reports you are getting. Have you been able to talk to people in rockport or long those fishing towns and waterways to see what damage is already been done . Know, we have not got any reports as of yet. We do have Emergency Operations center which is stood up and theyre tracking the situation going on but to my knowledge there is one vessel that was out some hours ago and we do not know the status if it is gone to safe harbor or not. Our role is after the storm has passed and we get into the recovery mode thats when our survey votes and assets will be out serving the areas and the ship channels after the hurricane makes landfall. Leland adam was talking about rain in the feet in terms of 30, 50 inches of rain coming down and i know theres been a lot of money spent in the galveston in the floodgates and canals and the breakwaters but is there any floodgates, is there any breakwater that can protect against 30, 40 or 50 inches of rain or are we guaranteed now for his recording . Thats one of the concerns we have with the way that it is sitting on us for this long period of time. The surge is not really the issue but the continued rainfall will be the more major concern and were just sitting out at this point in waiting for Mother Nature to do its thing. Leland if have you all been through one that would last this long as we heard about this extended amount of rainfall that is coming . Know, to my knowledge this is unprecedented. Something to hover around for a long period of time you will get a surge and thats where most of our worries come in with a surge over to been our structures. Here the surge is on the issue but you have the initial server that came through but its a prolonged rainfall that will continually count through our systems. What we did particularly in the houston area with our attics we left the gates open for as long as we could let that water natural flow continue until a point in time around 8 00 oclock last night when we finally closed them and now they are collecting water and we will keep them closed until it reaches the part where we have to do some type of emergency release if it will compromise our system. Leland you talk about overwhelming the systems and obviously they were designed for big storm surges and were seen that storm surge come up and matt bens life shot, high tide was about five hours away so you can expect more water coming rushing in and across the road and across businesses that are no doubt in that fishing village. You havent planned for this extended rainfall, these 30 or 40 inches of rain. Theres a difference between overwhelming the system and destroying the system. Are you looking at the possibility that this will be something that you can recover from in a couple of days or couple of weeks but we may be talking months . It wont damage the system but for our reservoirs it will take a couple of months to get the worstCase Scenario for us to drain they are dry reservoirs and to get them drain back down to where theres no water remaining in the because we have to do it slowly because you dont want to fund the people down the area of houston. There will be controlled releases at that point and it will take an extended amount of time. Leland were already hearing about the flooding threat in houston and when we talk to the mayor in victoria where the eye wall is just about over he said they already had big flooding this year and that was without a hurricane so the ground saturated and the trees are easily to be blown over and now the storm is unprecedented with historic levels of rain. It is just beginning for you and we to use dana plus. Thank you, sir. As we continue our coverage here on the left side of your screen is jackie, the left side of your screen was matt bens life shot with the track of the storm. It is beginning but the real damage is we are seeing from our affiliates and through twitter there is incredible damage across much of texas in areas that theres no communication to get information out of and hopefully well see more of that as we get into those communities in a couple of hours and its now a category three and will see more as the sun starts to come up. It is now 316 tarmac in texas. Stick with us for our hurricane coverage which will continue right after this break. Dont go anywhere. Its a record amount of rainfall that is being estimated. Be smart, try to stay in your house and protect your life and those assets around you. Dont go outside and dont try to drive. We dont know where all the water will go. When you have flash floods you always say turnaround, dont drown because you dont know how deep it is. If there is record flooding like this, we dont want that scenario to happen. When wind speeds are over 40 miles an hour our police cars are not out there. We wont have the resources to respond to these things so it might be expended amount of time to get help. Stay in the house and stay safe and dry. I was born and raised here and you know this is always an option but we deftly trained and im confident for Emergency Operations center here and we are prepared for this i know there will be issues and youll always have issues in circumstances like this but nothing we cant overcome and we can accomplish coming out of this. Did you know slow internet can actually hold your business back . Say goodbye to slow downloads, slow backups, slow everything. Comcast business offers blazing fast and reliable internet thats up to 16 times faster than slow internet from the phone company. Say hello to faster downloads with internet speeds up to 250 megabits per second. Get fast internet and add phone and tv now for only 34. 90 more per month. Call today. Comcast business. Built for business. Jackie it is now 3 20 in texas and Hurricane Harvey expecting to have a big impact on businesses. Weve been talking about this the last couple of hours, and shutting down Oil Refineries across the coast. Extreme puttering is expecting to bring michelle activity to a halt and may take weeks even months before some of the shelf fields can bounce back from this. Texas is the Largest Oil Producer in the states by far and part of the oilrich shell formation lies in the projected path of the storm. Companies have suspended drilling and evacuated nonessential staff. Others have shut down all operations in about 30 refineries on the gulf coast that process more than 5 millioy and as of thursday coming companies evacuated employees. This stands to have a major impact nationwide on gas prices. The prices every gallon could jump team25 cents a weekend, leland, as we mentioned, to get gas in texas people waited in long, long lines. Remember super storm sandy . I can only imagine in texas. Leland long lines if you can find it. This is a live shot from where matt bennett was broadcasting from and you can see the storm surge coming up in high tide is in a couple hours as is debris. Its 3 22 a. M. And daybreak is 7 00 a. M. And were still three and half hours away as the Storm Research continues to come in. Weve been talking all night about when you look at this picture it looks like a bad storm but where are these 130160mile an hour winds. Those places we cant get to and its unsafe to be. This is 20 miles 30 miles south of this location this is what the Police Department put on their twitter feed in their facebook feed. I will quote this is likely our last post until services can be restored. We have lost all connectivity outside of Public Safety radios. You cant call the police there. If you dial 911 you will be rerouted to portland 911 and as long as that remains up, stay safe in shelter and we are not leaving in will be here when it blows over. That was six hours ago and we have not heard anything from them since. That is the Police Department. Were bringing in adam has been tracking the storm and this speaks to exactly what we talk about. The worst part of the storms we dont see as it is happening evidence by those white boxes behind you that the wind meters that is to give you an other meteorologist information dont work anymore. We are completely blind essentially. It is chilling but with these particular boxes what we should be seeing our art wind gusts. Ive been here since 7 00 oclock yesterday, 7 00 p. M. And we were watching the storm moved closer. Farther away you can see the wind gusts of 70maybe 80 miles an hour but as this moves across the area we got up to 80 miles, 90 miles an hour and we saw those numbers and then they started dropping off one by one because these wins getting up to 130 miles an hour gusting up to 160 miles an hour. Some of them are buoys or on land and these wins are Strong Enough to take them out. The data is not being a sentence. Anywhere where the heart of this is going, leland and jackie, these are areas where its taking down communications for us and obviously with the story its taking down communications for a lot of folks trying to survive and take care of each other in those areas, as well. Leland adam, maybe you study this in school but how highly fortified are these weather installations . They have to know hurricanes come to these areas and they have to know that getting wind gust readings are important and what are they 452 . At what point do you know that they are broken . In this case we know theyve broken when they dropped off. It was consistent around 90 miles an hour and you do your best to put them in a location is protected but with the storm i guess theres only so much that can be done. They have to be in the elements and you cant protect it too much is you want to be able to get into the wind. Leland as we talked all night, jackie, its not only getting the readings but getting the conditions out. As we learned from the Police Department we havent heard anything from rockport but they dont have phones or cell phones and they dont have in many cases power and its difficult in the middle