TEXAS, USA.– Storm Harvey broke the historical raining record caused by a tropical organism in the continental part of the United States, according to preliminary data announced this Tuesday by the National Weather Service (NWS).

The system, which made landfall by the state of Texas last Friday as a category four hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, had thrown up this afternoon 51.12 inches (1298 mm) of rain in Mont Belvieu, an industrial suburb of Houston, the fourth most populous city in the country.

The NWS warned that the total “could potentially increase” as the storm continues hitting the state with heavy rainfall and flooding that will continue in the days ahead.

The previous record for an organism of this type was established in 1978 by tropical storm Amelia, which produced 48 inches (1219 millimeters) of rain in some parts of Texas.

Climatologist John Nielsen-Backgammon, university professor of the A & M State University, confirmed that it is the highest mark registered anywhere in the United States outside Hawaii. “And it’s still raining.”

Since arriving on the coast of Texas, Harvey has discharged at least nine trillion gallons of rain across the state, enough to fill Salt Lake in Utah twice, the Huffington Post portal reported.

Yesterday at 16:00 local time the tropical storm had sustained maximum winds of 85 kilometers per hour and was about 50 kilometers to east-southeast of Galveston, Texas, moving to the northeast at a speed of nine kilometers per hour.

It is expected Harvey to remain in the Gulf of Mexico waters before returning to make landfall again tomorrow between Texas and Louisiana, and to move northward through Louisiana.

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