WILL BROWNSVILLE GET HIT BY A HURRICANE THIS YEAR?

 

Brownsville's Public Utility Board, perhaps in a feeble attempt to make up for bilking ratepayers for $Millions in rate overcharges for a power plant never built, posted the hurricane warning above today.

Of course, the so-called hurricane season actually started June 1 and runs till November 1, but that's no reflection on the thoughtful warning reminder.  Thanks guys!

My first hurricane worry occurred in 1966, actually my first year in Brownsville.

With no internet back then, I charted the movement of Hurricane Inez on a gridded hurricane map showing longitude and latitude, plotting the movement of the system first spotted as a tropical storm in the Gulf, but intensifying and headed for Brownsville.

At night I stayed tuned in on my AM radio to a station in British Honduras, now Belize, for weather updates.(radio signals bounce funny sometimes.  I could also clearly pick up rock 'n roll from WGN Chicago in those days).

Brownsville was intensely and securely boarded up that year, 1966, for a storm that veered south at the last instant to strike Tampico.

A friend and I had the nerve to stop by Madam Palm's place of business on International Blvd., asking her daughter why they'd been all boarded up for a storm that never came if her mom could predict the future.  The daughter just shrugged her shoulders.

I was not around for the category 5 Cuba/Brownsville storm in 1933 or the 1889 hurricane that wiped out Bagdad, a city of some 20,000 established on the beach east of Matamoros.

But, ask your parents and grandparents about Hurricane Beulah, the biggest storm to ever hit our city, one of the most powerful in U.S. history.

As I recall, Brownsville residents were not as prepared for Beulah as they should have been, having been fooled by the last minute switcheroo of Inez the year before.

I still remember when the wind and rained started, not to stop for a week and a day.

South Padre Island was essentially wiped out, only to rebuild.

Roofs were blown off all over Brownsville.

With water everywhere in the city,  I remember seeing fish jumping out of flooded areas in town, although people scoff when I share that memory.

Please be patient with us Beulah veterans as we tend to be dismissive of "minor" storms like Hurricane Harvey of 2017.  That year I was living at Arroyo City where  it hit directly and was dumb enough to go outside during the "calm" of the eye's passing overhead.

Flooding was the main inconvenience, making the drive from Arroyo City to Los Fresnos impassable.

Below are some photos from Brownsville encounter with Hurricane Beulah: