How susceptible is South Texas to a powerful hurricane?

[HarlequinBoy]

Hi, I am not for certain this is the appropriate forum to ask this, so I apologize if not.


With a lot of speculation on where Dean will go,.. I realized that I am really unfamiliar with South Texas and how it could weather a blow from a Cat 2+ hurricane. Would surge be a major problem? Are the building codes just as stringent.. if not more than say Florida, or are they lax? What would the effects be.. would it be just as big of a catastrophe as the rest of the Gulf Coast?


BTW, I am not saying and DEFINITELY not hoping that Dean or any other hurricane goes that way or anything like that..

[Deputy Van Halen]

Sorry to see that no one has replied to your question until now.

I don't have any local insight into the matter. Hopefully someone else will chime in before this post scrolls out of site into the nether regions.

You might do some research on hurricanes Bret, Allen, Celia, and Beulah to get an idea.

[PerryW]

South Texas isn't as vunerable from a major hurricane as the upper Texas coast for two primary reasons; but disasters have occurred there on several occasions during the past century when one of the two major coastal metro areas (Brownsville/ South Padre Island; Corpus Christi) were directly hit.

The two major reasons a hurricane disaster aren't as likely to occur along the lower Texas coast are 1) the immediate coastline and barrier islands are much less densely populated than along the upper Texas coast and 2) offshore slope is deeper than offshore Galveston, so the storm surge threat is less (although still dangerous as several major hurricanes have proven in the past).

Perhaps the deadliest hurricane to strike south Texas since 1900 was a massive cat-4 hurricane which destroyed Corpus Christi in 1919.....most of the several hundred who perished drowned in a 10-14' foot storm surge. In more recent decades, major hurricanes Beulah (Sept 1967) and Celia (1970) caused major damage in the Brownsville and Corpus Christi areas respectively. The major landfalling hurricanes in this area since 1970 have fortunately struck open coasts outside the metro areas (Allen in 1980 and Bret in 1999). The last major hurricane to impact south Texas was Bret in August 1999. Fortunately Bret was of small diameter and struck a very sparsely populated area of the Texas coast to make landfall (Kennedy county south of Corpus Christi).

[HarlequinBoy]

Thank you very much!!