(CNN) – Hurricane Harvey made landfall Friday night between Port Aransas and Port O’Connor, Texas, as a Category 4 storm with winds of 130 mph, the National Hurricane Center says. Harvey is the first Category 4 hurricane to make landfall in the US since 2004.
The time for dire warnings, how Hurricane Harvey is life-threatening and could cause catastrophic damage, is over.
The reality is the Category 4 storm is poundng the Texas coast and its millions of residents with hurricane-force winds knocking down trees, power poles and signs, and with torrential rain deluging streets.
In its 10 p.m. ET update, the National Hurricane Center said the eye of the storm is almost onshore, bring with it a dangerous and powerful eye wall.
The hurricane center warns that some areas will see as much as 13 feet of storm surge and large, destructive waves. Maximum sustained wind speeds were at 130 mph on Friday night.
And there’s the rain that the slow-moving storm is expected to produce. Because it is expected to come to a near halt inland, Harvey could drop as much as 40 inches of rain in some places, and up to 30 inches in others, by Wednesday.
The combination of wind and water could leave wide swaths of South Texas “uninhabitable for weeks or months,” the National Weather Service in Houston said.
Such daunting language hasn’t been seen by CNN’s experts since Hurricane Katrina, which left more than 1,800 people dead in 2005.
The threat has prompted officials in at least one town to ask residents who stay behind to write their Social Security numbers on one of their arms in case. It will make identifying bodies easier.
The center of the storm was about 10 miles from Port Aransas, which has been battered by the slow-moving storm all day. It appears it will come ashore on San Jose Island soon.
“Texas is about to have a very significant disaster,” said Brock Long, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Gov. Greg Abbott warned of record-setting flooding and called on people to flee the area before the storm hits.
“My top goal is to be able to make it through this storm in a way in which we lose no lives,” Abbott said. “Put your life first and your property second.”
Residents were urged to evacuate. A mass exodus from the coast caused extensive traffic jams along the state’s highways, while other people boarded up windows and stocked up on food and water ahead of the storm, the effects of which are expected to last for days.
The storm will stall and dump rain on South Texas and parts of Louisiana into the middle of next week, forecasters predicted.
