RUSH: Things going on in Houston today, over the weekend, we’re seeing in many ways the absolute best of America. It is a devastating scene. It is incomprehensible to people with all kinds of questions. At the same time, the heroism and the selflessness that is occurring there to rescue people and animals, pets and so forth, is just a typically American thing to see.

You realize that we do this all over the world. Whenever there are disasters around the world, we are among the first on the scene with resources and human beings, humanity and so forth. An incomprehensible effort to save people, to save things, and to restore and rebuild. And this is exactly what’s going to happen here in Houston. It’s confusing, folks, because everything’s been politicized in America to the point that when you have a fast-developing hurricane like this, which just days before it struck was a tropical storm that wasn’t being paid much attention at all. And then overnight the thing just fueled up like crazy, becomes a Category 4 when it strikes.

And we have these supposedly unprecedented amounts of rain in a basically stationary system and people are saying, “Gee whiz, it’s global warming, global warming.” Don’t worry, I’m not gonna get off on global warming here. To explain this, you can’t avoid it. This is what people are thinking, ’cause the media’s got stories about this all over the place asking questions or making statements, “Is global warming responsible?” And it isn’t.

There is a meteorological explanation for everything that has happened here that can be made independent of anything global warming or man-made. Global warming, of course, means that man caused this, that our activities, that our progress, that our lifestyles caused this. And we didn’t. If we wanted to create 35 or 40 inches of rain over a drought area, we couldn’t do it, just as we couldn’t here. Yet it happened. And there’s curiosity. Why, and how? Why’s it not moving? Why was it stationary? Where does it get this amount of rain? Where does this rain come from? There are meteorological explanations for all of this.

The reason it didn’t move is there were high-pressure areas on either side of it. And hurricanes are steered by high- and low-pressure areas, and it was just sandwiched, it was just squeezed. It had no place to go because a hurricane is low pressure, and two high pressure centers, both to the east and west, basically had the thing locked. It couldn’t go anywhere until one of those two high-pressure areas either moves or dissipates, and that is beginning to happen now.

I was alerted to our official climatologist’s web page today, Dr. Roy Spencer, University of Alabama at Huntsville, and he’s got a great, comprehensive explanation for what has happened here meteorologically, whether you want to include global warming or climate change in it or not. And he does this rather well. He doesn’t do this in response to specific claims, political claims. He just establishes facts here meteorologically.

He points out that major floods are difficult to compare throughout history because of the ways in which we alter the landscape. Houston can get flooded by a drizzle. I remember, I forget the year, but it was in the summer, and there was a baseball game scheduled in the old Astrodome. And they had to cancel the baseball game after both teams had arrived because a late-afternoon downpour had flooded enough of the city that people could not get to the ‘Dome.

Both teams were there so they had a gigantic dinner on the field, the two teams together. It was the Astros and I think the Pittsburgh Pirates, but I’m not altogether sure, and I don’t remember the year. But these kinds of floods — well, not these kinds, but floods in Houston are not rare. And one of the reasons is the way we alter landscapes. Cities like Houston expand over the years, and when that happens dirt and soil, which soak up rain, are covered up by roads and parking lots and buildings with water rapidly draining off rather than soaking into.

The population of Houston is now 10 times what it was in the 1920s, and the Houston Metroplex area has expanded greatly, and the water drainage is basically in the direction of downtown. No criticism. It’s just the way it’s been built. There have been a lot of floods, disastrous floods in Houston dating back to the mid-1800s when the population was very low. In December of 1935, a massive flood occurred downtown as the water level height measured at Buffalo Bayou in Houston topped out at 54.4 feet.

Now, remember that number. People are being told it’s the worst ever. People are being told it’s unprecedented. It isn’t true — and again, this is not to lessen the damage, not to lessen the impact because it’s a disaster. Once again, we’re trying to keep things in perspective and do what we do best here, and that’s check the out-of-control, disaster/chaos-oriented media. In December of 1935, there was a massive flood of downtown Houston. Water level height at Buffalo Bayou topped out at 54.4 feet. I have a picture of it here at Dr. Spencer’s website.

It looks like what you’re seeing today except the buildings are older. By way of comparison, as of 6:30 this morning, the water level in the very same location as the flood of 1935 is at 38 feet — 16 feet lower than the flood in 1935. Now, the water is gonna continue to rise. The 38 feet is not final. But the point is the flooding has been much higher and much greater. But Houston has changed in those years as well. Now, the rainfall amounts. Are these totals unprecedented? The question’s hard to answer, but I remember Dr. Spencer was on this program once years ago.

He had called, and it was during particularly inclement weather. I don’t remember if it was a hurricane or a series of tornadoes or whatever. I asked him a question based on an instinct. I said, “Dr. Spencer, is the amount of water in our eco-system constant?” Meaning: Is the amount of water on earth — in the oceans, in the atmosphere, water vapor. Is it constant? He says, “Yes.” In other words: We don’t lose water. It just changes location. We don’t gain water; we don’t produce more. So where did these 40 inches of rain come from? How did it happen? They were not created out of thin air.

It was from circumstances that already existed. It wasn’t that brand-new water never before existing on earth came together on this storm and got dumped on Houston and other parts of Texas. The simplest explanation is that the water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico is about two degrees warmer than so-called normal. That’s a lot of heat and a lot of evaporation. Basically, that’s where the rainfall came from, is from the condensation of evaporation from the Gulf of Mexico. The heat just sucked it up out of there, those high-towering clouds. It turns into a hurricane, and then the rains come.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: These stories that are coming out of Houston, some just melt your heart. Have you seen the YouTube videos of the guy, he’s a cabdriver in Houston and a Cooper Rush hawk landed on the front seat of his car and wouldn’t leave. You haven’t seen this? The guy’s got a series of videos on YouTube. He’s a longhaired, you know, ponytail guy, and he’s a cabdriver, and this Cooper hawk apparently was afraid of the hurricane and landed on the front seat, the passenger side in his car. And it wouldn’t leave.

So he put some gloves on and he tried to put it on the open door, the top of the window, to try to get it to fly off, and it wouldn’t fly off. So the guy takes it in his house and he feeds it chicken livers, turns this hawk into a cannibal. He fed the hawk another bird! Don’t know if the bird knew it or not, but this is a predator. These are raptor animals, deep talons and this thing is as tame as it can be. And I’m wondering, was this thing formally in captivity? I’ve got all kinds of questions about it.

They finally called an animal control person after a couple days to come get the hawk. But the hawk wouldn’t leave. The guy turned it into his pet and it was docile, it was not flying around. It did not attack him. It ate the food that he gave it, but here’s what happened. In one of the videos the guy has got his camera on his phone and he’s panning the room in which the bird is sitting, just to give people the atmospherics. And for a split second in the pan you see a Confederate flag. And the comments blew up on this poor guy’s YouTube channel.

He was called a racist pig. He was even accused of turning the hawk into a racist. Some idiot actually said, “How dare you introduce that hawk into your racist culture.” And the hawk, of course, we don’t know what this particular hawk’s feelings are about Robert E. Lee, because it can’t speak. But here’s this guy doing this marvelously humanitarian thing.

He could have done the opposite. He could have, when the hawk wouldn’t get out of his car, wouldn’t leave his window sill, he could have forced it into flight, but he didn’t. He took it in and he sheltered it in the midst of this storm. He could have taken it to animal control but it was raining like crazy, so he brought it into his apartment. He basically saved a wild animal, and he’s being ripped to shreds on his own YouTube channel ’cause there’s a Confederate flag somewhere in his house. It’s hung. Oh, and the guy, there’s somebody sitting in front of the Confederate flag smoking a cigarette. It’s dangling from his lips and it looks like a Benson & Hedges 120, one of those long mama-jamas.

He’s talking to the hawk, and the hawk is not making any noise. It’s trying to eat. It’s just amazing. Stories like this abound all over Houston. There was a guy, a storm chaser who picked up a stray dog and ended up reuniting it with its owner. All kinds of heartbreaking things that are happening, but these are great human interest stories. You see people rising to the occasion, which a number of people always question during times of cultural upheaval, cultural rot, you know, what kind of people are we. And in this case, you’re seeing — well, you’re seeing everything, but in addition to everything, you’re seeing the best aspects of humanity surface.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to start with Sharon in Crane, Missouri. It’s great to have you on the program, Sharon. How are you? You’re first up today. Very important in setting the tone.

CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh, it is an honor, sir.

RUSH: Thank you very much.

CALLER: Mr. Limbaugh, I have family in Houston, and my nephew is a fireman. He’s out there trying to help people. I don’t want to hear left, right, radical, nothing. I do not want this situation politicized.

RUSH: What are you hearing? What are you hearing, Sharon, that’s got you upset?

CALLER: Well, I hear people saying, “Well, you know, they’re going to have to keep the money from the wall in order to pay for this. They’re gonna have to do this, they’re gonna have to do that.” I don’t want to hear that, sir. This is an American situation. There is not a state in the union that is not prey to some kind of natural disaster. California, Oroville Dam, wildfires. New York, blizzards.

RUSH: Well, yeah. But that’s bogus ’cause everybody knows Mexico’s gonna be paying for the wall anyway.

CALLER: Sir, I’ll tell you what. I don’t want to hear any of the political nonsense because there will be plenty of time after the people are saved. And there are people down there that are in danger and they are suffering. And this is a time for Americans to put on their big pants and say, “All right. We’ll fight about this later, but right now we’ve got a situation that we need to take care of.” This is a time for Americans to be Americans. That is my comment.

RUSH: That is well said, Sharon, and I actually think you’re seeing a lot of that. There are some swipes at Trump for not being there. I mean, you know… Look, after Katrina and the way they were able to convince people that George W. Bush didn’t care… In fact, Hurricane Katrina, do you remember they were saying that Bush steered the hurricane to New Orleans in order to have all those Democrats harmed so that they would leave Louisiana and migrate to Texas — which is a Republican state, which could absorb them! There were people that said this, that Bush steered the hurricane, that Bush didn’t care — and they’re trying to rev the same things up with Trump here.

You know they want to. The people who politicize things like this are your friends on the left. These people that are protesting nothing at Berkeley. There’s no opposition. They just show up — and, by the way, some in the media… They regret having to do it, but they’re admitting now that there’s all kinds of violence and hate on the left in these Antifa or Antifa or Antifa, however you choose to pronounce it. That’s another thing that we have discuss that revved up last week before the hurricane hit.

But my observation is that there is a really admirable aspect of humanity that’s on display and there for everybody to see in Houston. Now, there’s some arguments over who did or did not give an evacuation order for Houston. “Why wasn’t Houston evacuated?” Well, let’s go back to New Orleans. Remember the post-hurricane flood photos and there’s all those school buses that had not be used? There was an evacuation, but nobody in the state or city of New Orleans had mobilized any of the school buses to get people out. Now, there’s some people saying that the governor wanted people to get out of there; the mayor didn’t.

The governor did issue an evacuation order. He was thinking about it. The mayor of Houston did not. Somebody correct me if I’m wrong. When the thing hit, I was in Hawaii, and I was not watching this live because of the six-hour time difference. But tell me the truth in there. You’re watching this. Was anybody in Houston…? If they’d been paying attention to the media, were they aware that a big storm was coming? (interruption) Okay. So there was no shock here. This thing didn’t sneak up.

After it hits Corpus Christi and it comes across as a 4, and it was huge… (interruption) Okay, my point is… (interruption) Well, I don’t know. Why would you need an evacuation order if you…? I mean, why can’t you make up your own mind and get out of there? But you know, you’ve gotta be understanding. We have so many people in this country who’ve been conditioned to wait for the authorities, for the officials to say things, that if there’s no evacuation order, people will interpret, “It’s not that bad. The government didn’t say anything.”

You can’t deny that people have been conditioned that way.