It had been 12 years, since Katrina, that an Atlantic hurricane of this strength had made landfall on the American mainland.

On 17 August, meteorologists were watching storm formations in the Atlantic. They named one Potential Tropical Cyclone 9. Later that night, they renamed it Tropical Storm Harvey. For the next week, the storm was downgraded to a Tropical Wave, then upgraded to a Tropical Depression. But as it closed in on the coast of Texas, fuelled by warm Gulf of Mexico waters, it grew stronger and was headed for the coast of Texas.

Americans were rattled and sickened by the Charlottesville rallies of 11 and 12 August, and the death of Heather Heyer when a young man ploughed his car into a crowd of counter-demonstrators. The country spent the following week in shock, badly needing moral leadership and calm. In response, Donald Trump praised the white supremacists as “very fine people”, and cast shared blame for the violence on the anti-fascists who had gathered to confront the neo-Nazis.

On 16 August, as Harvey lumbered across the Gulf, Trump announced that he would hold a rally in downtown Phoenix on 22 August. The assumption was that he would use the opportunity to pardon former sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had been found guilty of contempt of court for defying a judge’s order to cease racial profiling. Doug Stanton, the mayor of Phoenix, begged Trump to reconsider the rally. “America is hurting,” he wrote in an op-ed. “And it is hurting largely because Trump has doused racial tensions with gasoline. With his planned visit to Phoenix on Tuesday, I fear the president may be looking to light a match.”

As the coast of Texas prepared for the worst storm in a decade, Trump flew to Phoenix, where about 15,000 supporters and an equal number of protesters gathered. I was there, and watched as the police did their best to control the crowds, even while anti-fascists known as the John Brown Gun Club moved through the throng carrying loaded AR-15s and handguns. The night ended with teargas. For an hour, those of us in the crowd saw what Phoenix would look like in a war or under martial law. Miraculously, there were no deaths or serious injuries.

Meanwhile, Americans living on the Gulf Coast made plans. Many areas were under mandatory evacuation orders. Those choosing to stay bought food and water, boarded up their windows and filled sandbags.

On 24 August, the storm was upgraded to a category 2 hurricane named Harvey. Within a day, it had been upgraded to a category 4, with winds at 125mph. It was headed for Houston, the fourth-largest US city, with a population of 2.3 million.

Donald Trump at a rally in Phoenix, Arizona on August 22. Photograph: Ralph Freso/Getty Images

Forecasters called the storm life-threatening, and predicted that it could swamp cities as far as 100 miles inland. Once it made landfall, they said, it would stall, and drench cities with days of rain. Ocean storm surges were expected to be between 10 and 15ft high.

Harvey struck first near Corpus Christi on 25 August and then, for the next two days, paused over Houston, deluging the area with 52 inches of rain. Reservoirs overflowed and coastal highways were subsumed by the sea. Almost 30% of Harris County – which included Houston and covers 1,800 square miles – was flooded. Twenty-seven trillion gallons of water saturated affected areas of Texas and Louisiana.

A 60-year-old Houston police sergeant, Steve Perez, was driving to work when he was trapped by high waters and drowned in his car. Beaumont police found a three-year-old, alive and holding on to the body of her drowned mother, Colette Sulcer, 41. Sulcer had tried to carry her daughter to safety when she was drowned in a rain-swollen canal. Four men died after setting out on a small metal boat to help neighbours. Their boat struck a power line and all four men were killed.

In all, at least 75 people died in the US as a result of Hurricane Harvey. The death toll was considered miraculously low, given almost 2,000 lost their lives to Katrina.

On Friday, as the storm savaged Houston, Trump announced the pardon of Arpaio and pushed further on his plan to exclude transgender soldiers from the military. On Sunday, he tweeted about an upcoming appearance in Missouri which, he said, he “won by a lot in ’16,” and recommended a book written by a former campaign supporter. In response, John Lopez, a Houston sports radio host, tweeted, “My city is underwater. People losing everything. Unrelenting storm. Medical/1st responders on NO sleep. Thanks for book recommendation, tho.”

In the wake of the storm, there was talk of climate change and its effect on the frequency and severity of storms in the Gulf. In 2015, scientists James Elsner and Nam-Young Kang published a study in the journal Nature Climate Change which found that warming waters in the Gulf of Mexico were making regional storms stronger. “We’re seeing fewer hurricanes,” Elsner said, “but the ones we do see are more intense. When one comes, all hell can break loose.”

After five days of rain and chaos, the sun appeared over Houston on 30 August. The same day, a storm was developing near the Cape Verde Islands, after leaving the coast of West Africa. By 4 September the storm would develop into a category 5 hurricane, headed directly for the Caribbean islands and Florida. “If this isn’t climate change,” Miami mayor Tomás Regalado said as the storm approached, “I don’t know what is.”

As the storm bore down on Florida, Trump tweeted his excitement about its scale: “Hurricane Irma is of epic proportion, perhaps bigger than we have ever seen.” In another tweet, he wrote, “Hurricane looks like largest ever recorded in the Atlantic!”

Irma thrashed the Caribbean islands and flattened much of the Florida Keys. Damage was estimated to be at least $60bn. Sixty-nine people died.

After the storm, reporters asked Trump if the two hurricanes made him rethink his opinion on climate change. “We’ve had bigger storms than this,” he said.

Last Sunday, as Florida and Texas and Louisiana began to pick up the pieces, as funerals were held across the region and tens of thousands were struggling without electricity and clean water, when families were still living in shelters, the storms and their consequences were seemingly far from Trump’s mind. That Sunday, he retweeted a gif showing him hitting a golf ball and knocking over Hillary Clinton.

• Dave Eggers is the author of Heroes Of The Frontier

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