July 29, 2008 (Tuesday)
The history books will show that Hurricane Dolly came into Texas on South Padre Island, but lightning from a thunderstorm in one of the spiral bands zapped at least four electronic appliances in our Rockport home, nearly 200 miles north of the eye of the storm. Yesterday, four days later, the remnants of Dolly flooded Ruidoso, New Mexico, a city located at 6,720 feet elevation, way over a mile high and almost a thousand miles from South Padre Island.
Scott Jones, pastor at First Baptist Church, Rockport, posted a blog entitled, “Well, Hello, Dolly!” After the storm moved on, he wrote another entitled, “Goodbye, Dolly, and good riddance.”
I’ve personally seen several hurricanes during my lifetime, and no two have been alike. When I was a child in Houston, my uncle reported that a man in downtown Houston was holding onto the post of a traffic sign, and waving in the wind like a flag. A young tree across the street was bent by the wind and its top branches touched ground. The eye passed, and the wind blew from the opposite direction, causing the branches to touch the ground on the other side of the tree. A few years earlier, I recall how my grandmother and grandfather put pots and pans all over the house to catch the water coming down from the ceiling in another hurricane. Both storms blew in during the 1940’s. In the early fifties, one came that sent the San Jacinto River out of its banks. Hurricane Carla came in as a Category 4 storm and still had 50 mph winds and an eye as it passed over Dallas. Hurricane Beulah dumped so much rain that Texas looked like a lake from San Antonio south. Allen and Gilbert were Category 5 storms; both were forecast to hit Texas, but Gilbert went to Mexico and Allen weakened somewhat as it came in over sparsely populated areas. Satellite pictures showed Allen filling the entire Gulf of Mexico. Took us and thousands of others 5 extra hours to drive to San Antonio as we evacuated. Celia in 1970 will never be forgotten, with its 160-200 mph winds. On we could go, describing others like Fern, that went up the coast to Galveston, and then returned by the same route to South Texas, causing devastating floods, but suffice it to say again, no two have been alike. Tropical Storm Allison, just a few years back, meandered around dumping massive amounts of rain. Timbergrove Baptist Church, where I am now pastor, had four feet of water in it. Katrina and Rita are still fresh on our minds. So, believe me when I say, you cannot believe anyone who tells you he knows all about hurricanes. That person is mistaken. He has not seen the next one yet.