Summer has its ups, long beach days and sultry evenings, and its downs, sizzling sidewalks and punishing humidity.

Summer news coverage also has its peaks and valleys, silly season stories of dogs on surfboards, but also hurricanes.

This time last year, we were awash in coverage of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, and unbeknownst to us,

soon to witness the devastation of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria.

For news producers, hurricanes offer the best kind of bad news, because the story arc is invariably compelling and yet predictable.

First, the gripping countdown as the storm approaches the coast, then shaky shots of

tumbling cars and heroic rescue operations, survivors surveying the wreckage, tears of rage and grief. It doesn't seem

hard to understand, but in fact it is. And it's harder still to learn from. So as weather

wreaks havoc at ever-increasing rates, we are reprising last summer's breaking news consumers' handbook,

U.S. Storm Edition.

Harvey dropped about 24.5 trillion gallons of water on southeast Texas in southern Louisiana.

Water levels reached over 50 inches in Houston, and the media drew on statistical jargon to convey just how rare that was.

Calling Harvey unprecedented and beyond anything experience.

In Harris County alone, a trillion gallons of rain has fallen over four days, which is more than flows over Niagara Falls

in two weeks. To put this in perspective, the National Weather Service today added two new colors

to its rainfall charts, including light pink, which signals 30 inches or more, and 40 inches

have fallen in Dayton, Texans. There is some precedent, however, to the whole country watching on in horror.

Twelve years ago, nearly to the day, we were gripped by another disaster in the Gulf called Katrina.

And like Harvey, that disaster exposed a flaw in engineering. In New Orleans, it was the levees.

In Houston, it's the city itself.

Nina Satija is an investigative reporter and producer for the Texas Tribune and reveal.

Last year, she co-wrote a piece called Boomtown Flood Town,

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