The National Weather Service had to add a new color to its maps to show Harvey's rainfall
Sometimes a Weather event comes along that is so extreme it exceeds the ability of Weather forecasters to accurately represent it on a map. That is the case with Hurricane Harvey, which weakened to a tropical storm on Saturday and dumped so much rain on southeastern Texas that the National Weather Service's (NWS) maps needed to be altered.*
With more than 30 inches of rain falling in just a few days, the NWS added a lavender layer to its rainfall map to indicate areas that have already seen what it has called "unfathomable" amounts of rain.