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Hurricane Harvey made landfall late on Friday night. It is one of the worst hurricanes to hit the southern US since Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005. At time of writing, Harvey is still hovering over Texas’s Gulf Coast. It has been downgraded to “tropical storm” status but is still battering Houston and surrounding areas with heavy rainfall.

For towns ravaged by 210-kilometre-per-hour winds and, in some places, 2 metres of storm surge, the biggest danger is now catastrophic flooding. as local and federal emergency services struggle to evacuate thousands of residents fleeing the rising water.

While Harvey wasn’t caused by climate change, warmer air and water temperatures contributed to up to 75 centimetres rainfall, and resulting flooding, in the area. And the rain isn’t expected to peter out for another couple of days. Some parts of Texas are expected to see almost 130 centimetres of rain by the time it’s all over.

Temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are running a degree warmer than normal, after being 2 or 3°C above normal in spring, says , a climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Ů��С��Ƶs. “A warming world has the potential not for more hurricanes, but rather more intense hurricanes,” she says. Warmer air can hold more water vapour that is eventually rained out, and warmer water holds more energy for a hurricane to draw its power from.

Playing catch-up

Texas is no stranger to devastating hurricanes and tropical storms: in 2008 Hurricane Ike killed and caused almost $40 billion in damages. Yet Texas hasn’t done much in the way of hurricane damage prevention since then.

“Houston is sort of playing catch-up,” says at Rice University’s Center for Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation in Houston. “We know what needs to be done, but just need to find the political will to make it happen.”

The biggest contender when it comes to protection is Texas A&M University’s “”: a proposed coastal barrier across Galveston Bay meant to protect the shore from storm surge. But the project hasn’t got off the ground. Bedient says the state doesn’t have time to wait for federal money, and that levees to hold surges back could be constructed with local funding.

Houston might be waiting a long time for federal funding. Just 10 days before Harvey made landfall, President Donald Trump rolled back a set of flood risk regulations passed by the Obama administration. The rules had required federally funded, public infrastructure to be designed with climate change impacts like sea level rise in mind. Trump argued that they slowed down construction.

“It sets a terrible precedent,” says Bedient, adding that flood-risk analysis is a routine part of the construction process. “It’s slower to build a building that’s safe from flooding? Now that’s fake news.”

If no steps are taken, the risk is that Texas will be just as unprotected the next time a Harvey-level storm hits.

Read more: New Orleans: Are the new defences tough enough?