The ones I’ve seen
July 29, 2011 (Friday)
As we await the arrival of Tropical Storm Don (evidently most of his action will be south of us here in Rockport), I’m thinking about the storms I’ve seen “up close and personal.” Going back to 1941, I remember a storm when I was living with my grandparents and rainwater was coming through the roof of the old house we were in, in Houston. My grandmother fetched all her pots and pans and placed them on the floor throughout the house, to catch the water as it dripped from the ceiling.
The next storm I remember was in 1942 in Houston. We experienced the eye of the storm. Everything got quiet and then the wind came from the other direction. The man across the street had planted a tree and after the storm, he put three pieces of lumber around it to keep it upright. Many years later I drove down that street and saw the tree again, by that time a big sturdy one.
My next encounter with a hurricane was in 1962 with Carla. I was living in Dallas at the time, and after its destructive work on the coast, it came through Dallas. It still had 50 mph winds and the eye was still intact.
The next one I met personally was Beulah in 1967, which brought so much rain that Texas south of San Antonio looked like a huge lake. It spawned many tornadoes which did much damage.
In 1970, Celia came to call, and did enormous amounts of damage with winds some said gusted to 200 mph. Almost every building in this area was damaged by her winds. Not much rain.
Allen, in 1980, was one of the most powerful storms on record, but landed in relatively unpopulated areas and lost its punch soon after landfall. Travel on the highways was unbelievably congested. Took 3 times normal time to get to San Antonio.
In 1988, Hurricane Gilbert, one of the largest and most powerful storms ever, caused total evacuation of Rockport and surrounding areas. It went into Mexico without turning toward Texas as predicted.
Tropical Storm Frances came into Rockport in 1998, and caused quite a bit of rain for Wanda and me in our R.V. parked in Houston.
I was living in Houston in 2005 when Rita came into Texas and carved a swath just east of Houston. Yielding to fear in the wake of Katrina, the highways became glutted with evacuees and many vehicles were stranded without gasoline.
I was living there also in 2008 when Ike hit the area hard. Power was lost for several weeks throughout the area.
There were many more tropical storms and hurricanes, not to mention tropical depressions, which can do a lot of damage, as we found out when Allison hit Houston in 2001. I’ve mentioned only those I can personally remember.