High Pressure and Hurricanes

The huge dome of high pressure continues to hover over Texas, and we continue to have record high temperatures and drought. 

I don’t know if it has anyone seriously praying for a hurricane yet– though there have been lots of joking references to that – but just about anyone who has lived through this summer would probably welcome a tropical storm.

Actually, this is historically a good day for Texas hurricanes;  not one, but two hurricanes made landfall on the Texas coast on August 18 – Alicia in 1983, and an unnamed storm (they didn’t name them back then) in 1916.

For a small storm, Alicia did an awful lot of damage, but it did bring some much-needed moisture.

On Aug. 18, 1983, the center of Hurricane Alicia moved over the Texas coast about 25 miles southwest of Galveston. It was the first hurricane to strike the Continental USA since Allen in 1980. That was the longest period in this century that the U.S. mainland had gone without a hurricane landfall (Tropical storms did hit within that time).
Although Hurricane Alicia was a small to medium-size hurricane, it was notable for the delayed post storm evacuation of Galveston Island (since the eye of the storm traveled the evacuation route up I-45 from Galveston to Houston). The hurricane was also notable for the shattering of many windows in downtown Houston by loose gravel from the roofs of new skyscrapers and by other debris.

 
Twenty-three tornadoes were reported in association with Alicia.
The hurricane reached a minimal Category 3 status as it hit land. Aircraft observations indicated that only a 60-mile section of the coast, extending northeastward from Freeport experienced hurricane force winds. Despite its small size, Alicia caused over $2.4 billion in damage.

On Aug. 18, 1916, a Category 4 hurricane  struck South Texas (landfall was south of Corpus Christi) coast. It was the fourth hurricane and third major hurricane of an active 1916 Atlantic hurricane season. Hurricanes of that time were not given names but the 1916 storm was the strongest hurricane to hit the Texas coast since the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, and it caused 24 fatalities