This is the first day of 2007 Hurricane Season.
June 1, 2007 (Friday) – This is the first day of 2007 Hurricane Season. Coastal residents usually pay attention to this date, even though the peak of the season is still three months away.
When I moved to Rockport, in 1964, people were still talking about the 1919 hurricane that killed about 40 people in Rockport and many more in Corpus Christi. The eye came in at Baffin Bay. We don’t hear very much about the 1919 storm anymore, because nearly all those who survived it have since died.
People who had lived here all their lives also told me about some storms that came this way in the thirties and forties, before storms were named. Some of those storms were very bad.
Everyone still talked about Carla in 1961, The eye came in around Port O’Connor, and the storm did damage all up and down the Texas coast. I lived in Dallas at the time, and it still had an eye when it passed over us there, hundreds of miles inland. People still talk a lot about it today.
The first one I actually experienced here was Beulah in 1967, probably one of the wettest on record, that made a huge lake of all Texas south of San Antonio. That storm spawned numerous tornadoes and did a lot of damage far inland as well as right here in Aransas County.
The one my family and I, and many readers of this blog will recall is Celia, that came in on Monday, August 3, 1970. It was small, short-lived, and proof that “dynamite comes in small packages.” Virtually every structure in Rockport was damaged by the winds, and many homes south of us were completely blown away. Winds in some places were thought to be 200 miles per hour. We were over four months rebuilding our church house.
There have been other storms that hit us a glancing blow and left their marks on this area, but the ones I’ve named were the ones we remember here in Rockport.
On the minds of many people today are memories of the 2005 season that brought Katrina and Rita. Will we have a storm in 2007 like those? Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes, and even volcanoes have plagued many cities in our country. The fact is there is no place in the nation (or world) where you can be assured of complete freedom from disaster, not to mention the daily threats of accidents, illness, and sudden loss. But the Lord wants us to live confidently, without fear. In every place and every day we need to prepare as well as we can, behave prudently, and put our trust in the Lord. Have you put your trust in the Lord?
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Click here to view Texas Handbook Online – Hurricane history
Click here to view 2007 Hurricane Survival Guide
(Click here to view last year’s Hurricane Survival Guide)
Clicking on “1919 hurricane” above shows info and photos