2017 Officially The Wettest In Houston History With Nearly 3 Months Remaining

HOUSTON, TX — Hurricane Harvey was called a 1,000-year storm by most area meteorologists. The Category 4 storm that battered Texas and the Bayou City will most likely be the rain event in which all future storms are measured in Houston. It's also the single-most reason Houston has already surpassed the all-time wettest year in recorded history with nearly three months still remaining on the calendar.

With Tuesday's rain at George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Houston has now risen past 1900 as the wettest of all-time. Houston in 2017 has already received 74.18 inches of rain, with about 40 of that coming from Harvey alone in August. The old record was in 1900 when the "Great Storm of 1900" in July that year helped set the mark at 72.86 inches. The Great Storm was the hurricane that destroyed Galveston, back before hurricanes had names assigned to them.

According to the National Weather Service in Houston, August was the wettest month at Bush Intercontinental with 39.11 inches of rain, including a day-high of 16.07 inches of rain on Aug. 27. To put that into context, of the next nine all-time wettest years, none of them had a total rainfall of more than 19.5 inches of rain in a single day nor did they have more than 8.15 inches of rain in a single day.

Furthermore, Bush Airport didn't receive the most rainfall as some places in the Greater Houston area received more than 50 inches of rain from Harvey.

Harvey slammed the Texas Coastal Bend on Aug. 25 as a Category 4 storm, leveling many of the towns along the coast like Rockport, Aransas Pass and Port Aransas. The storm meandered east and hovered over Houston for four days, dumping biblical rainfalls and crippling the city and its infrastructure. Harvey downgraded into a tropical storm and moved to the Golden Triangle, dumping another 50 inches of rain over Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange, Silsbee and other towns, turning them into islands.

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Top image: A home is surrounded by floodwater after torrential rains pounded Southeast Texas following Hurricane and Tropical Storm Harvey on August 31, 2017 near Sugar Land, Texas. Harvey, which made landfall north of Corpus Christi August 25, has dumped nearly 50 inches of rain in and around areas Houston.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images