Hurricane Bret Strikes Southern Texas

By: Corey Potvin

Powerful hurricane Bret crashed ashore the Southern Texas coast on Sunday, August 22nd, deluging towns with torrential rains and battering the area with howling winds. Citizens along the shore were ordered to evacuate inland in advance of Bret as it intensified to Category 4 strength, making it the strongest hurricane to affect the region since 1979. Attention had originally been focused on Northern Mexico, but Bret postponed its westward turn enough to make a U.S. landfall inevitable.

After its sheer intensity, Bret's most striking feature was its small size. The compact nature of this storm became very apparent as Bret slammed into Kenedy County during the evening hours on Sunday. While areas very near the eye of the storm suffered substantial structural damage, locations over 40 miles away from the hurricane's center got by with mainly downed trees and power lines.

The effects of Bret's winds were far eclipsed by its torrential rains which fell in amounts of up to 25 inches in less than 24 hours. Putting this into perspective, Lewiston averages between three and four inches of rain each month. Needless to say, street flooding was a major problem in many Texas towns, although river flooding was kept to a modest level due to recently dry conditions.

Despite the fact that Bret was a full-fledge major hurricane when it made landfall, no deaths or serious injuries have been reported. Two factors contributed to this : Bret's relatively tiny size, and the fact that it missed densely populated areas like Corpus Christi (275,000) and Brownsville. Had these two conditions not been met, Texas may have suffered a natural disaster similar to the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew southern Florida in '92. Texas officials are undoubtedly breathing a sigh of relief.