Harvey Now Officially Wettest Storm in U.S. History

It’s official: Last year’s Hurricane Harvey was the wettest storm in U.S. history.

Residents return to their homes to collect belongings on Aug. 31, 2017 in Houston, Texas.

Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Harvey dropped more than 60 inches of rain in some locations, according to the final U.S. Geological Survey analysis of the storm. That number shatters the previous continental U.S. record of 48 inches set in 1978’s Hurricane Amelia.

To confirm the rain amount, field crews with the USGS collected high-water marks after the storm at 2,123 locations across Texas and Louisiana. The agency then analyzed the data to get the storm’s totals and to create 19 different flood maps showing the extent ...