Bull Butter
08-03-2006, 10:51 AM
Hurricane Celia makes a visit to the Coastal Bend
Those of us in South Texas old enough to remember will never forget August 3, 1970, the day a lady named Celia made a visit to Corpus Christi and South Texas.
She started out near Cuba as a tropical depression and quickly intensified into a minimal hurricane and fluctuated between 75-90 mph over her course. As she motored toward the Texas coast, she seemed to be eyeing the Port Lavaca-Port O'Connor area as her likely place of landfall. During the early morning of Aug. 3, 2 things happened- Her eye shrunk from 40 miles wide to only 10, going from a moderate hurricane to a killer. And she turned due west- headed straight for Corpus Christi.
For me, a boy of 6, I thought the storm was just a minor disruption of our family's vacation to Rockport. When my Grandmother's house started rocking back & forth and we didnt know if the roof was going to blow off or not, all of a sudden it wasn't so fun. Also not fun was Rockport being without power, water, phone service for the next 4 days we were there. When we went home, I remember the National Guard stopping traffic at the entrance to the Harbor Bridge. When we got home, we found out that Agua Dulce's power came back right after the storm (nice decision to stay in Rockport,dad!:mad: ) Not much to do because all 3 Corpus Christi television stations had been knocked off the air and remained off for the next 2-3 weeks. The first one to come back on was KIII-Channel 3 and all they could do was show old movies because they were unable to recieve the ABC network signal.
Any "old timers" out there with any Celia stories?
Those of us in South Texas old enough to remember will never forget August 3, 1970, the day a lady named Celia made a visit to Corpus Christi and South Texas.
She started out near Cuba as a tropical depression and quickly intensified into a minimal hurricane and fluctuated between 75-90 mph over her course. As she motored toward the Texas coast, she seemed to be eyeing the Port Lavaca-Port O'Connor area as her likely place of landfall. During the early morning of Aug. 3, 2 things happened- Her eye shrunk from 40 miles wide to only 10, going from a moderate hurricane to a killer. And she turned due west- headed straight for Corpus Christi.
For me, a boy of 6, I thought the storm was just a minor disruption of our family's vacation to Rockport. When my Grandmother's house started rocking back & forth and we didnt know if the roof was going to blow off or not, all of a sudden it wasn't so fun. Also not fun was Rockport being without power, water, phone service for the next 4 days we were there. When we went home, I remember the National Guard stopping traffic at the entrance to the Harbor Bridge. When we got home, we found out that Agua Dulce's power came back right after the storm (nice decision to stay in Rockport,dad!:mad: ) Not much to do because all 3 Corpus Christi television stations had been knocked off the air and remained off for the next 2-3 weeks. The first one to come back on was KIII-Channel 3 and all they could do was show old movies because they were unable to recieve the ABC network signal.
Any "old timers" out there with any Celia stories?