Tropical Storm Harvey, which has dumped more than 49 inches of rain over parts of Texas and flooded hundreds of thousands of homes, intensified this afternoon over the Gulf of Mexico as it continued to move to the North-Northeast.

(Visible satellite imagery of Tropical Storm Harvey late afternoon on August 29th shows the storm slightly re-intensifying before a second landfall with strong rain bands again threatening Houston. Image source: The National Hurricane Center.)

As of the 4 PM CDT advisory from the National Hurricane Center, Harvey’s minimum central pressure had dropped to 994 mb even as its maximum sustained winds increased to 50 mph. This made Harvey a still rather weak tropical storm is it continued to lash sections of Eastern Texas and Louisiana with winds and rains.

Now a 5-day long event since threatening the Texas Coast as a category 4 storm on Thursday, Harvey has produced…