Any predictions for the name fate of Harvey?

I think it will depend entirely on what the next couple of weeks brings to Texas and the Gulf coast. The problem with Katrina wasn't that it was a hurricane that existed (there are many hurricanes every year), or even that it was an unusually strong storm (though it was). It was that it shut down the city of New Orleans and surrounding communities for something like a year, killed about the same number of people who died in the 9/11 attacks, produced sobering media images that are still remembered today (refugees huddled in the Superdome, entire neighborhoods abandoned for months, dead bodies floating in the flood waters), and was an entirely preventable disaster which happened because of catastrophic mismanagement by public officials all the way up to the President. There are several historic quotes, memes, and turns of phrase that are still to this day associated with Katrina, for example "Heckuva job, Brownie!", FEMA trailers, and political pundits wondering whether this or that event will be "[Politician]'s Katrina", i.e. a moment of abject failure that kills their future electability.

Meanwhile, if Houston dries out and it's business as usual within a few weeks, the death toll remains about where it is now (eight people as opposed to thousands who died in Katrina), and things are rebuilt and reopened in a timely manner and the whole thing doesn't turn out to be the fault of a few craven politicians, most likely the name Harvey won't cast the shadow that Katrina still does. Because, like I said, there are hurricanes every year. Hurricanes that strike major cities make the news more than those that don't, but for example my guess is that hurricanes didn't poison the names Rita, Sandy, Gustave, or Irene in the way that Katrina is pretty much a no-go 12 years later.

I'd keep Harvey on the back burner and revisit this when you find yourself naming an actual real life son. You never know. On the other hand, I'm expecting a son due in November, and if we were considering Harvey it would be out of the question at this point. We have friends and family in Houston. Even if the storm doesn't prove to be that memorable, I wouldn't want to have close friends who thought bitterly about the name because it's shared with the storm that flooded their house. So if you are personally close to the Harvey fallout and expecting to use the name within the year, I might rethink.

It probably depends on where you live. If you live in southeast Texas, I'm guessing it will not go over so well. (Even if fatalities remain mercifully low, they are estimating up to a $100 billion in property and infrastructure damage, which is obviously devastating.) If you're in Minnesota, it is probably fine...I have a cousin named Andrew who was born in 1992. The vast majority of the family, who all lives in the Chicago area, thought it was a great name. His grandparents in southern Florida found it pretty insensitive. So families are something to consider too...

I'm from a hurricane-prone area. We were hit by Isabel in 1999. There were 51 fatalities. Many people were without power for days or weeks.

You know what happens when people are without power, can't get to work, and are bored? Yeah, about 9 months later there was a little bumper crop of little Isabels. Spelled that way too.

I think if Harvey remains costly, not deadly, it may take a tiny dip in popularity but revive and continue climbing. Like Isabel, it's a classic name on the verge of a renaissance that will likely tip over into popular consciousness in part due to the storm. Unlike other storm names, like Cindy, it was already poised for a revival before it became a big storm. The storm will just hasten its arrival.

Yeah, I don't think it's going to be usable for several years now.

I don't have too much insight yet but I have been thinking about this a lot. Harvey is a family name for me.

It was going to trend upwards I believe because it's the type of friendly old-fashioned name that people have been really liking. It's been rising steadily in popularity and now ranks #412. It may begin to decline.

I remember finding Katrina somewhat unusable but maybe my familiarity with Harvey is clouding my judgment. I would like for it to stay in use, since it only just reentered the top 1,000 in 2000.

I think it depends on the death toll, like others have said. I went through Hurricane Katrina and still can't meet anyone with that name without mentally wincing. My cousin named her daughter that a few years before the storm hit, and I feel sorry for the girl for being saddled with such a depressing name, even though she was born first. (Well, it's a nice name on its own. Just horrible associations for us, of course.)

I also think it depends where you are. If you are not near Texas, it won't loom so large in the local consciousness.

Maybe I'm thinking of this superficially because I've never experienced a hurricane, but Hurrican Harvey has has 23 fatalities, which while being a lot is nothing compared to the other a thousand Katrina ones. Maybe Harvey would be a bad choice in the immediate future, but at the moment it doesn't seem to me that the disaster is just as big as Hurricane Katrina, so I think it may be good after a year or two.

I don't think it will matter. By the time the child is older, there will have been other hurricanes and it won't play on people's minds like it will right now.

More fodder for speculation: I was just reminded via facebook that there was a hurricane Isaac that hit the Gulf Coast in 2012. I'm from Louisiana, where the worst of Isaac's impact was, and five years later I've forgotten that it ever happened. We had Isaac on our potential list of boy names, and the hurricane never even came up as a concern despite the fact that I grew up directly in the path of that storm and certainly had family and friends who were impacted.

Isaac is currently in the top 100 baby names in the US.