Monday, August 23, 1999
Local weather may benefit from Hurricane Bret
By BOBBY HORECKA
Staff Writer
West Texans didn’t board up their windows, stock up on
non-perishable food items, or buy a lot of flashlight batteries
when they heard Hurricane Bret was coming to the Gulf Coast.
But Bret might be the Big Country’s best chance of rain
this season, National Weather Service officials in San Angelo
said Sunday.
With weather patterns indicating a definite front in the area
by Tuesday, the moisture brought on by Bret could be the bumper
crop of raindrops farmers have been waiting on.
It could also be a flub, weather forecasters said. It all depends
on what Bret does on land.
“It’s largely going to be a wait-and-see game,”
meteorologist Tim Hendricks said.
Bret made landfall at around 6:15 p.m. Sunday, with the brunt
of the storm hitting a largely unpopulated region south of Corpus
Christi.
The storm dumped rains over the area and sent waves crashing
to the shore, some towering 30 feet or more. Winds were whipping
at about 140 mph when it first reached the shoreline.
“The hurricane shouldn’t affect our weather patterns
directly, but it could provide a source of moisture for some of
the first real rains this month,” Hendricks said.
A cool front is expected late today or early Tuesday. The more
moisture there is in the air before the front hits, the greater
the chances will be for rain when the front reaches the area.
Tracking programs at the weather office show the storm should
be headed due west. Forecasters are hoping the moisture will head
up the Rio Grande Valley to the west and north.
If that happens, Abilene and the surrounding area will get
some good rains.
But the jury is still out, Hendricks said.
Hurricane Bret left many forecasters rethinking their systems
this weekend after original projections had the storm hitting
well south of Brownsville, which was several hundred miles off
its actual landfall.
Chances of rain in Abilene will remain slight through most
of today but then increases to about a 40 percent chance for rain
on Tuesday. “We’re keeping it conservative for now,”
Hendricks said.
Temperatures will also cool off a bit. Thermometers should
only get up to the mid-90s today, Hendricks said. On Tuesday,
they will probably struggle to even reach 90 degrees.
Bret is the first Category 4 hurricane to hit the Texas coast
since 1961, Hendricks said, with torrential rains and winds exceding
140 mph near the eye.
Weather Channel reporters said the storm had decreased to a
Category 3 hurricane within minutes after its landfall.
Although tropical storms and hurricanes have historically helped
the Big Country get much-needed moisture at this time of year,
they has also played havoc on different areas in the past.
In 1931, San Angelo had a cold front coming and was expecting
some rain, much like the present situation. They got much more
than they expected.
The skies opened and dumped 20 inches of rain on the city that
year, with the remnants of a hurricane still going strong here
out west. San Angelo was flooded.
Although the National Weather Service is not predicting a similar
situation now, there’s always the chance something like that
could occur, Hendricks said.
For now, at least, he’ll keep the conservative approach
to West Texas weather, he said.
Bobby Horecka can be reached at 676-6736 or horeckab@abinews.com.
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Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps Publications
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