The 275 trillion pounds of water from Hurricane Harvey deformed the ground in Texas.
The Atlantic by Alexis C. Madrigal 9/5/2017
The weight of water can deform the Earth’s crust, if there’s enough of it. And we can measure that change with the ultraprecise global-positioning satellites humans have launched into orbit.
On Monday, Chris Milliner of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted a simple map visualizing data from the Nevada Geodetic Laboratory. It showed that the GPS data from special stations around Houston detected that the whole area had been pushed down roughly two centimeters by the weight of the water that fell during Hurricane Harvey.
GPS data show #Harveyflood was so large it flexed Earth's crust, pushing #Houston down by ~2 cm! #EarthScience #HurricaneHarvey #txflood pic.twitter.com/88lNScJBq9
— Chris Milliner (@Geo_GIF) September 4, 2017
Why this would happen is simpler than you might think. A gallon of water weighs about 8.34 pounds. And by one estimate, Harvey dropped 33 trillion gallons of water across the area it hit. So that’s roughly 275 trillion pounds.
More:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/hurricane-harvey-deformed-the-earths-crust-around-houston/538866/
