swampgator92 wrote:As far as wind damage goes, the areas that got the worst winds (Cat 2 Sustained, Cat 3/4 Gusts) had a population of 10,000 or so people. If this had hit 30 miles to the south, it would have barreled into metro Corpus Christi with a population of half a million.
The worst surge appears to have hit national wildlife refuges where birds live.
The damage in Rockport I've seen are not the cataclysmic total destruction of concrete block buildings you see in a Hurricane Andrew. Mobile homes and manufactured homes did poorly but that's to be expected in Cat 2 winds. There are isolated pockets of total destruction but all in all not so bad considering the hype.
We'll see what happens with the flooding. That has the potential to be really bad especially in the metro areas like Houston, San Antonio, and Austin if the feeder bands hit in bad spots but the area that will get the most rain is cow country too. Lots and lots of lots of nothing.
It reminds me a little of that Cat 4 storm that hit cow country in Texas and bothered nobody.
This could have been sooooooooooooooooooooooo much worse. Nothing compared to Andrew.
Are you referring to Bret? I believe that was only a cat 3. This storm will be much worse because of the rain over populated areas. Additionally although I agree with your estimated wind speeds observed in the vicinity of Rockport, I think Bret had one overland sustained hurricane force wind measurement in total, and to be honest I think Wilma was the last CONUS storm to actually produce a sustained Cat 2 measurement (yes I know that Ike etc. likely had cat 2 sustained in un-instrumented areas). So Cat 2 sustained winds are nothing to sneeze at and I saw several in the Aransas/Rockport vicinity last night. Also although I didn't see this measurement the NHC listed a 111 sustained 131 gust in their 10 pm update last night
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2017/al09/al092017.public.023.shtml?. That has got to be the strongest measured with a tropical cyclone in the CONUS since Charley and probably the strongest that has happened since Katrina.