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Hurricane Harvey, one of the worst hurricanes that hit the United States in recent history, poured recordbreaking rainfall across the Houston metropolitan area. Based on a comprehensive set of data from various sources, we examined the dramatic responses in hydrodynamic and sedimentary processes of Galveston Bay to this extreme event. Using a freshwater fraction method that circumvents the uncertainties in surface runoff and groundwater discharge, the freshwater load into the bay during Harvey and the following month was estimated to be 11.1 x 10(9)m(3), about 3 times the bay volume, which had completely refreshed the entire bay. Harvey also delivered 9.86 x 10(7) metric tons of sediment into the bay, equivalent to 18 years of average annual sediment load. At a site inside the San Jacinto Estuary, acute bed erosion of 48 cm followed by deposition of 22 cm of new sediment was observed from the sediment cores. Slow salinity recovery (similar to 2 month) and a thick flood deposit (similar to 10.5 cm average over the entire bay) had likely impacted the ecosystem in the bay and the adjacent inner shelf. Estuarieswith similar bathymetric and geometric characteristics, i. e., shallowbathymetrywith narrowoutlets, are expected to experience similar dramatic estuarine responseswhile extreme precipitation events are expected to occur more frequently under the warming climate. (c) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license.