The winter of 1983 would be the last season that I'd have to endure the often gloomy and harsh climate of the upper midwest. I'd been through many winters of ice storms, 15-below thermometer readings, and life crawling to a halt due to weather emergencies. My brother had already moved south many years ago. My sights had been set on sunnier skies for quite some time, and I finally made the move to Houston; where the climate is relatively palatable. Except for the summer of '83, that is.
Far more often than not, dangerous tropical weather
signals its intentions way over in the Atlantic or the Caribbean, giving the weather
wizards as much as a week or more of giddy excitement, guessing the path and
development. But on Monday morning, August 15, there hadn't even been a
significant tropical wave for 1983. By the evening news, a li'l ole tropical
depression in the Gulf of Mexico, just south of Louisiana, was beginning to look like a
bit more than some scattered offshore showers.
Alicia becomes a hurricane
His flight to New York made it out of Intercontinental Airport shortly before they shut down operations. On my way home, the persistent lightning illuminated the encroaching ominous black bands of clouds, just like you see on the satellite pictures of hurricanes, except that I was watching this from ground level, on the freeway. And the wind was getting real nasty.
New to town, I'd been staying with my brother Jack and his family. There were no cell phones in 1983, so by the time I pulled up to their house at 10 PM in a frenzied storm, I believe they were relieved. The TV was blaring with the latest weather bulletins, and the radar was the scariest local situation I'd ever seen. Over a period of just two days, this weather system escallated from a blip on the radar to a Category 2 Hurricane, rapidly intensifying to a Category 3, heading right this way! The radar and satellite imagery filled the entire western portion of the Gulf, with an annoyingly noticable progression in our direction.
Jack's house, as with most of Houston, is at least 50 miles inland from the coast. Hurricanes typically lose energy as they pass over land, so we weren't panicked about the entire house being blown down. But who could really know? This area hadn't suffered a direct hit since Hurricane Carla in 1960. Out in the back yard, all the vegetation was bent and pointing violently westward in the wind. It wasn't like watching the tree branches thrashing in a thunderstorm-- there was nothing wishy-washy about this, it was a constant directional howling blow, peppered with high-velocity horizontal rain.
The electrical power lasted until almost midnight. The last radar images on TV showed the eye of the storm heading toward the west end of Galveston Island, right where Jack owned a beach house. And it was tracking right up toward where we were. As we listened to the radio bulletins in the dark, interrupted by lightning, we concluded that we'd done all we could do to face the storm that was beginning to show its full brunt. All the patio furniture, plants and loose objects had been stowed.
The humidity was, of course, 100%. Being holed up in a house with no power was not pleasant. We decided to open the sliding-glass patio door, which was shielded from the weather by eight feet of patio roof. Jack's wife Kathie decided to shut the fretting family toy poodle up in my room, fearful that the dog might run out the door into the hurricane. Of course, most dogs have the common sense not to do this, but this little poodle was unpredictable.
If you've never been through a hurricane, it's difficult to envision the perpetual sounds of nature's greatest sustained wrath. It doesn't sound like wind. Wind has a higher-pitched, swooshy sound. This is a deep, insidious, intense, powerful roar. It varies slightly in pitch atonally, irrythmically, and unexpectedly. It sounds absolutely demonic, like a mean, ill-willed chant. And through the prevalent blast, you hear desperate flapping and crashing of things out there. You wonder what the hell is going on.
My feelings were not so much of fear, but of annoyance. I knew
this was something I'd have to endure, but was eager for the damn thing to slow down
already! So, around 1 AM, confident that we all did all that we could do, I decided
to get some sleep.
The Offending Poodle
I have proof that I can sleep through anything, for after I dried off, I crashed on the sofa for three hours. When I awoke around 5 AM, all was relatively quiet. Confirmed by the weather report on the radio, we were now in the eye of the storm. A tour of the yard revealed an astonishing mess, but fortunately no major damage except for the fence. All of the large trees on the lot sacrificed branches and leaves, but buffered some of the direct force of wind and rain.
I realized that I would probably not be afforded many opportunities in life to drive around within the eye of a hurricane. Low spots on the road were flooded, but the crest in the center was visible, so I cautiously headed out. South Post Oak Boulevard, the main throroughfare I just traversed several hours prior, was not recognizable. It was an obstacle course of mangled signs, traffic lights, building materials and what-not. And all was dark except for my headlights peering through a gentle rain. About a mile down the road, a small oasis of light stood out like a beacon in an ocean of darkness. Coming closer, I could see distinctive golden arches. Yes, the McDonald's was open! That building was the only sign of life in view.
It was filled with emergency workers taking a break. The manager told me he had no idea why their electricity was still on, but as long as it was, they'd be cranking out food. A police officer asked me where I was heading. I told him, "back home, up Post Oak, northbound". He told me I better get my butt moving, because the other side of the eyewall was rapidly charging up from the south. With bags of breakfast and hot coffee for the family in hand, things quickly became ominous as I got back in the car.
The highest sustained winds of a hurricane are usually right at the eyewall, the spinning center of the spiraling storm. I didn't need a radar scope to know that it was practically on my back bumper as I negotiated the obstacle course. I was glad I didn't venture any further, for by the time I pulled in to the driveway, debris was beginning to fly through the air.
Things that were weakened by the first brunt of the storm were thrashed by the Category 3 winds blowing from the opposite direction. The hideous moan returned. All we could do was sit it out, and wonder of the fate of Jack's beach house, right where the storm reportedly made landfall.
Alicia was a relatively fast-moving storm, and by the following late morning the skies in Houston began clearing. Downgraded from Hurricane status, the storm moved northward causing destruction and flooding in other areas of Texas. We packed up for the drive to Galveston, expecting the worst.
National Guard troops set up a checkpoint on the road to the west end of the island, verifying property ownership papers. Crews had bulldozed enough debris and chunks of homes off the road enough to create a circuitous one-lane path. It's always profound to see a major disaster area on TV, but to drive through a familiar area and find it unrecognizable is astounding.
The area was pounded by four destructive forces. Hurricane winds, 14 tornadoes, an eight-foot storm surge, and a violent backwash as the surge receeded. Many beach houses were blown completely off their stilted platforms, smashed portions of others remained. An RV lot looked like a jumbled pile of toys thrown down by a chlid after a temper tantrum. A tornado sliced the exterior wall from a house, leaving bottles in the bathroom pantry standing undisturbed (see the picture in the Hurricane Alicia Gallery, second row, third column).
Fortunately, the evacuation order had been heeded by all but a few, so no deaths occured in this area (21 fatalities were reported elsewhere, and a small group of foreign tourists who had no idea the hurricane was coming were stranded on Galveston's West Beach, miraculously surviving the storm in a rest room.)
Historically, Galveston Island is no stranger to hurricanes, most
notably the Great Storm of 1900 which claimed more than 6,000 lives. A 20-foot high
concrete seawall was built on the developed east end of the island (which greatly lessened
the blow from subsequent storms), but the 16 miles of the narrow west end remained flat.
Eventually, thousands of raised beach homes sprung up.
At
first, some thought that property values would go down, and that nobody would want to
build new homes following this disaster. Quite the opposite. Within ten
years the number of beach homes on the west end more than doubled, along with dozens
of new stores and eateries. And nothing of the scope of Alicia has encroached
in the past 19 years.
