The word “major” in this context is subjective. The last hurricane to make landfall in Texas and result in fatalities — Shepherd’s main concern — was 2008’s Hurricane Ike. It rolled across the Caribbean and slipped up into the eastern corner of the state early that September, killing 113 in the United States. That included 84 people in the Lone Star State.

What struck me about the length of time that’s passed since that storm wasn’t that there were a slew of new Texan-born people in the intervening period. Instead, it was the migration patterns that have emerged in the United States over the past several decades, as the Northeast empties out and the South and West gain new residents.

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Using the most recent hurricane and tropical storm warnings for Texas counties (the latter applying to inland areas, which are projected to be hit by Harvey after it weakens slightly), I overlaid the change in population since 2008 with the areas that were most likely to feel the effects of the storm.

The upshot? More than 1.4 million people have moved into counties in Harvey’s path since Ike hit the state. 600,000 of those are in Harris County, home of Houston — a city that’s uniquely at risk from the effects of a major storm. That means, though, that more than 840,000 people moved into other areas of the region, including Corpus Christi and San Antonio.

It isn’t just kids who aren’t used to dealing with hurricanes; it’s more than 1 million other people who moved to those counties from elsewhere in Texas and from other states over the past decade or so. Across the state, 3.5 million people were added, and given that the flooding is expected to extend beyond the range indicated above (including into Travis County, home of Austin), it suggests that many more new Texans are in harm’s way.

It’s worth noting that, in the past 30 years, heat is the only weather-related phenomenon that’s killed more Americans than flooding.

During the daily news briefing Friday, President Trump’s homeland security adviser Tom Bossert encouraged people in Harvey’s path to respect evacuation orders and routes. There are people who’ve been trained in planning how to deal with weather events like this, he noted, and they know what they’re talking about.