Start stocking up on batteries and bottled water. Forecasters agree: The coming Atlantic hurricane season looks like a busy one. A number of factors, principally higher-than-normal temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean where most tropical storms form, indicate this season will see a flurry of tropical activity. “A wild season is on the way,” predicted Joe [...]
Posts under ‘Hurricane Katrina’
Do July showers bring August hurricanes?
So we had a nice, wet, not too hot July that among other things help erase the drought in Harris County. What could possibly be bad about that? Increased risk of hurricanes, that’s what. [Impact Weather forecaster Chris] Hebert studied the 20 wettest and 20 driest Julys on record for Houston and found a striking [...]
Here comes El Niño
Our hurricane season could be short. The formation of Tropical Storm Debby last weekend in the Gulf of Mexico brought the tally of Atlantic storms to four this season, the earliest that’s ever happened. But despite the quick beginning, scientists say this season may have a much quicker end, with an El Niño system likely [...]
Calculate your storm risk
That hurricane risk calculator is now ready for your input. Using the Storm Risk Calculator produced by the city of Houston and Rice University, users can enter an address and learn the risks for rainfall, power outage, storm surge and rain damage. For example, Houston Mayor Annise Parker’s house in Midtown has a low risk [...]
How bad would a big hurricane be to Houston?
Very bad. I trust you are not surprised by this. When a really strong hurricane next blows through Houston, its winds – not its waters – pose the greatest threat to inflict damage unimagined by most living here. Tropical Storm Allison produced a virtually worst-case flooding scenario in 2001, racking up $5 billion in damages. [...]
The Ike Floodgate
We have a recommendation for how to prepare for a future Hurricane Ike. A giant floodgate at the entrance to the Houston Ship Channel, coupled with a 130-mile wetlands recreation area, should be built to protect Houston from hurricane storm surges, a research team from five Texas universities recommended Monday. The two-year study led by [...]
More Perry privatization problems
Insert your favorite cliche about being shocked. The state of Texas has quietly outsourced the management of more than $1 billion in federal disaster recovery funds to an engineering firm with close ties to Gov. Rick Perry’s administration, paying the Kansas City, Mo. -based firm HNTB $45 million so far to process infrastructure grants for [...]
Hurricane season is mostly behind us
Normally, this would be considered good news. Ironically, even as the Atlantic tropics reach their peak and Texas marks the anniversaries of 1961′s Hurricane Carla on Sunday and 2008′s Hurricane Ike next Tuesday, chances of a hurricane making landfall on the state this year are falling. “Historically, hurricanes rarely impact the Texas coast after mid-September, [...]
Friday random ten: Blowin’ in the wind
Those of us here on the Gulf Coast are quite familiar with hurricanes and all they can bring with them, so we have much sympathy for those on the East Coast who are in the path of Hurricane Irene. Whether you hunker down or get out of town, we wish you all the best as [...]
Time for the annual “Are we ready for a big storm?” story
The answer, of course, is no, not really. After Tropical Storm Allison’s devastating floods, the Houston area widened its bayous and hardened its infrastructure. After Hurricane Rita’s deadly gridlock, the state revamped storm communications and evacuation plans. Yet since Hurricane Ike’s enormous surge wiped out coastal communities and its $30 billion in damages dwarfed those [...]
Time for the annual “We’re in for a busy hurricane season” forecast
And indeed, forecasters say we are in for another active year, as was the case last year. Here’s SciGuy with some discussion. [S]easonal forecasters did a pretty good job of calling last year’s extraordinarily active season. So while there’s no way we can say precisely where storms might make landfall this year, it’s a fairly [...]
Hurricane Alex
Stay safe, everyone. Heavy downpours and possible coastal flooding are forecast for the next few days in the Houston area as Hurricane Alex churns in the Gulf of Mexico and then slams ashore along the northern Mexican coast south of Brownsville. The rain and flooding lessen later this week as Alex moves inland across north [...]
Ike Dike gets a study
The “Ike Dike”, a network of dikes and gates off the coast of Galveston that was first proposed last year by William Merrell as protection against storm surges from future hurricanes, is being discussed more seriously by the Gulf Coast Community Protection and Recovery District. Although the Ike Dike may not be the final solution [...]
Active hurricane season predicted
Hurricane season officially begins today, and it looks like it will be a busy one. As we have previously discussed, there’s ample reason to expect a very active hurricane season this year. And so it wasn’t too surprising this morning when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of the National Hurricane Center, [...]
AAUP criticizes UTMB for post-Ike layoffs
Oops. The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston and the University of Texas System (UTS) violated established and widely accepted guidelines on academic freedom and tenure when it laid off more than 2,400 faculty and staff in the wake of 2008′s Hurricane Ike, according to a report released today by the American Association [...]
What Katrina crime wave?
So remember how there was this big increase in crime in Houston in the months after Katrina evacuees arrived here? Well, it turns out that the crime data indicates otherwise. Five criminologists who reviewed crime statistics published a study in the current issue of the Journal of Criminal Justice, and found only a “modest” increase [...]
More or stronger?
If we’re talking about hurricanes, neither sounds like an attractive choice. A new study with the most extensive computer modeling of storm activity to date suggests the overall number of Atlantic storms will fall 30 percent by century’s end, but the number of the strongest category 4 and 5 hurricanes will increase by 81 percent. [...]
Better days ahead for UTMB
The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston is not only coming back, it’s growing. Although the UT Board of Regents authorized 3,800 layoffs, UTMB officials announced that about 3,000 jobs would be cut. The actual number turned out to be about 2,400, but it was widely interpreted as a step toward dismantling Texas’ oldest [...]
Bye bye, hurricane season
More like this next year would be nice. The Atlantic hurricane season ended Monday with barely a whimper: Not a single hurricane came ashore in the United States. Since June, when the season began, just nine named storms developed. Only three of them became hurricanes, and those stayed out at sea or weakened before passing [...]
Galveston Shriners Hospital now open
The Galveston Shriners Hospital, which was closed down after Hurricane Ike and was set to reopen on Monday after a long battle to bring it back, has opened its doors a few days early. Kudos to all involved for getting this done.
Shriners Hospital reopens next month
Back in July, delegates at the national Shriners convention voted to reopen the burn hospital for children in Galveston. The date to reopen has now been set for November. The hospital, a world leader in burn research and source of the foremost textbook on burn treatment, is tentatively scheduled to reopen Nov. 8, said Tommy [...]
The end is near for hurricane season
One of the better things about the onset of fall is the threat of a hurricane greatly diminishes. To be fair, more than two months remain before the official end of hurricane season on Nov. 30, and the seas remain plenty warm for low pressure systems to spin into tropical storms. But for Texas the [...]
UTMB’s comeback
This is great to see. A bigger and better University of Texas Medical Branch is rising from the debris of Hurricane Ike, with more than $1 billion in repair, refurbishing and new construction under way or being planned. The UT Board of Regents recently authorized $667 million worth of new projects at UTMB, an amount [...]
A year after Ike
One year after Hurricane Ike made landfall over Galveston, the news is surprisingly positive for the island, though many challenges still remain. The Lege helped Galveston in a number of ways for this year, such as requiring UT to reopen the Medical Branch and allowing the school district to use its 2008 count of students [...]
New beach boundaries
We have a new vegetation line, which determines where the public beach ends and private property begins, courtesy of Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. The line will determine whether beachfront property owners whose buildings were destroyed by Ike on Sept. 13 will be able to rebuild or possibly lose their houses to the public beach. Patterson [...]
Ike Dike update
As the first Atlantic tropical storms of the year make their appearance, we get an update on the proposed Ike Dike. One of Hurricane Ike’s legacies may be the hardening of the upper Texas coast against hurricane storm surges. Within weeks, a post-Ike committee appointed by Gov. Rick Perry will recommend that six Texas counties [...]
Brought to you by…
People don’t like it when you mess with their icons. Public fury over a proposal to rename an iconic seawall park after a snack chip led Frito-Lay to ask Galveston County commissioners to halt the renaming process, a Frito-Lay spokeswoman said Wednesday. Galveston city officials had asked commissioners to recognize a $1 million donation by [...]
Still waiting on Rita aid
I’m appalled by this. The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs has spent about a third of the federal funds it received to help low-income residents rebuild homes damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Rita almost four years ago, the state auditor reported Friday. As of June 5, the state housing agency had spent $135 [...]
Too quiet?
It’s been very quiet on the hurricane front so far this year – not a single named storm in the Atlantic as yet. The good news, as SciGuy notes, is that this means the projections for the number of named storms we’ll eventually see have been revised downward. The bad news is that as usual, [...]
The Ike baby boom bust
Remember this Chron story from May? Doctors who work in Houston’s busiest maternity ward say they’re expecting an especially bustling June, leading some to conclude that Hurricane Ike was the perfect storm for making babies. It’s been eight months since Ike knocked out the region’s electricity, leaving many with no television, Internet access or other [...]
Hurricane season quiet so far
That’s nice, but it doesn’t mean we’re in good shape. Although the first Atlantic named storm typically forms by July 10, the real activity doesn’t usually begin until August, and a lull in early season activity doesn’t necessarily presage a weak overall season. The 2004 season, for example, didn’t see its first storm until Hurricane [...]
Shriners Hospital in Galveston to reopen
Good news. Delegates at the national Shriners convention meeting in San Antonio voted Monday to reopen a world-renowned burn hospital for children in Galveston, closed since it was damaged by Hurricane Ike in September. Convention delegates voted to keep open all of the 22 hospitals nationwide in the Shriners system and, in a separate decision, [...]
Planting vegetation against the tide
I suppose there’s more than one way to try to save your beachfront property. In Texas, a thin green line in the sand separates private property from public beach. And that line of vegetation is drawn by Mother Nature. Some property owners, however, are taking a more proactive approach by planting grass and shrubs along [...]
UTMB to open emergency room
Awesome. The University of Texas Medical Branch is scheduled to open a full-service emergency room Aug. 1 for the first time since Hurricane Ike inundated its campus more than eight months ago, relieving pressure on overburdened emergency rooms throughout the region. “I don’t think it’s a secret that a smaller UTMB has had an impact [...]