I have been talking about Hurricane Celia and Corpus Christi as though that was the only city affected.
It wasn't.
- Highest wind gusts (180 mph) were recorded at Aransas Pass and Robstown. The Corpus Christi weather station recorded 161 before the anemometer blew away.
- At 95%, the City of Portland had the highest percentage of homes and businesses that sustained damage.
- Still a Tropical Storm, Celia did over a million dollars worth of damage to Del Rio, and it was still a Tropical Depression as far west as El Paso.
- Shortly after forming in the western Caribbean, the Tropical Depression that would become Celia crossed over Cuba where it caused five people to drown, and once in the Gulf of Mexico and before it turned west, the storm surge from Tropical Storm Celia caused nine deaths along the coast of Florida.
- Total damage from Celia - homes, businesses and crops - exceeded $3 billion in today's dollars.
Category 4 storm! Didn't know that for decades -- well after I moved out of the USA. We (my family and I had just moved to Corpus) at the time that the storm had downgraded to a category 2 or 3 just before it hit. Interesting how wrong a lot of the info was way back when. We were lucky in that the home which had just been purchased wasn't right on the beach (we lived in a new suburb, 10 minutes drive from Oso Bay, 20 minutes from the Harbor Bridge). The only major damage was the loss of huge sections of a wooden fence, surrounding the backyard (which had to be replaced by my father as soon as, since we had three dogs). Other neighbors weren't quite so lucky. Across the street, a house with brick archways in front of the door, had its brick facade lifted up and smashed. And I recall the streets being flooded for about a day or so (lots of children were sloshing around, waist-deep, playing in the water). And, of course, dry ice was bought as quickly as possible until power could be restored.
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