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Harvey's Birth, Death, and Rebirth: The Forgotten First Chapter of One of America's Costliest Hurricanes

At a Glance

On August 17, 2017, Tropical Storm Harvey was born east of the Windward Islands.
Harvey would sweep through the Windward Islands the following day.
Harvey then degenerated into a tropical wave in the Caribbean Sea.
Harvey's Gulf of Mexico landfall and slow crawl were catastrophic for parts of Texas.

One year ago this weekend, Tropical Storm Harvey was born and died, a first chapter that was overshadowed by Harvey's rebirth and its catastrophic Gulf Coast strike and stall a week later.

On the morning of August 17, 2017, the National Hurricane Center was monitoring Hurricane Gert in the north Atlantic as well as three other areas of potential development. One of those was a tropical disturbance several hundred miles east of the Windward Islands that ended up becoming Harvey.

(MORE: 17 Moments We'll Never Forget About the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season)

As National Hurricane Center scientist Eric Blake tweeted, the contrast in activity with August 17, 2018, in the strip of the tropical Atlantic from Africa to the Caribbean couldn't be more stark.

Tropical storm watches and warnings were issued for parts of the Windward Islands at 11 a.m., while the disturbance was dubbed a potential tropical cyclone—one that could threaten land as a tropical storm within 48 hours but had not yet developed.

By late afternoon, a Hurricane Hunter aircraft found the disturbance had a sufficiently-defined low pressure circulation near the surface with enough thunderstorms near it to earn status as Tropical Storm Harvey while it was 400 miles east of Barbados.

Harvey quickly swept into the Windward Islands on August 18, with peak sustained winds of 45 mph, mainly north of islands, according to the NHC's final Harvey report.

Wind shear then ripped Harvey's circulation apart in the eastern Caribbean Sea, and it degenerated into a tropical wave, ending its first chapter as a named storm, on August 19.

Harvey would regenerate in the western Gulf of Mexico four days later, slamming into the Texas coast just north of Corpus Christi as a Category 4 hurricane the night of August 25, then hovering for days across southeast Texas and leading to the heaviest and most widespread tropical cyclone rain event on record in U.S. history.

(MORE: Full Hurricane Harvey Recap)

Harvey was reponsible for $125 billion damage in the U.S., according to an estimate from NOAA, making it second only to Katrina in the list of costliest U.S. hurricanes, when adjusting for inflation.

Harvey became one of four 2017 Atlantic hurricane names retired from future use by a committee of the World Meteorological Organization.