Texas Shores, Volume 39, Number 4, Winter 2007 Page: 2
36 p. : col. ill.View a full description of this periodical.
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TEXAS SHORES: news
by Jim Hiney
Barely one month after Hurricane Katrina devas-
tated New Orleans and coastal Mississippi and Ala-
bama, and one day after Hurricane Rita pummeled
east Texas, Terrie Looney and her family returned to
their Chambers County, Texas, home near Winnie fully
expecting to be added to the 2005 hurricane season's
home-loss statistics.
Along their three-hour trip from Livingston, where
they rode out the storm, they passed myriad fallen trees
and mangled buildings particularly metal structures
missing roofs.
"I was expecting to find nothing," says Looney,
Texas Sea Grant Extension's marine agent for Cham-
bers and Jefferson counties. "We left fully prepared to
come home to nothing. Before we left, I knelt down to
pray in the driveway to the Lord and said, 'You gave
this to us. If you want it, you'll take it away but I know
you'll lead us and keep us safe."'
The family turned into the driveway of their 8-acre
property and found trees down and other evidence of
Rita's wrath, but their home was still intact.
"My husband and I burst out laughing because it
was a tremendous blessing," she remembers. "We lost
other things the roof on the barn, we had fences
down and debris was blown all over the place but we
had our house."
The Looneys were among the lucky ones.
A record 28 storms grew strong enough to be named
during a season that began June 1, 2005, and stretched
into early January 2006, five weeks beyond the tradi-
tional Nov. 30 end of the season.
Of the 28 named storms, 15 became hurricanes
(another record) and seven of these grew to be major
storms (one shy of the record set in 1950). A major
storm is one that reaches Category 3 or higher on the
Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.A record five of the seven major hurricanes grew to
become Category 4 storms and a record four reached
Category 5 intensity the highest possible, with sus-tained winds in excess of 155 miles per hour.
Five of the storms (Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina,
Rita, Stan and Wilma) were deemed so devastating to
life and property that their names were retired from
the list of potential storm names. Retiring five names
from a single hurricane season is ... you guessed it ... a
record.
In total, the tropical storms of 2005 caused more
than $100 billion in damage to the United States and
were blamed for more than 2,280 deaths. The season's
most famous storm, Hurricane Katrina, was respon-
sible for the vast majority of the destruction credited
with causing about $80 billion in damage along the
Gulf Coast and killing more than 1,300 people.
rThe Safir-Simpson Hurricane Scale2 I Winter 2007
The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale - developed ip 1969
by civil engineer Herbert Saffir and Bob Simpson, whe va
nead of the U.S. National Hurricane enter at the time -
is a 1-5 rating system for classTfying Western Hemisphere
hurricanes by tieir Iighest sustained wind speeds.
The scale Is used primarily to predict the amount of
damage and flooding a hurricane will Cause when it makes
landfall. A storm is deemed a tropical depression when its
winds are between o mph and 38 mph. It is upgraded to
a tropical stormand given a name when sustained wind
speeds are between 39 mph and 73 mph. Once a tropical
cyGlohe's highest sustained winds pass 74 mph, the storm
beca$ne a hurricane and is rated by the Saffir-Simpson
Hrincane Scale Using the following categories:
a gor 1 - Wind speeds between 74-95 mph,
Storm surge of 4-5 feet expected (storm surge values
are pendent on the slope of the continental shelf
FI th landfall region).
+ Catery2 --wind speeds between 96-110 mph,
storm surge of6-8 feet expected.
Category 3--r Wind speeds between 111-130 mph,
storm surge of 9-12feet expected.
Category 4- Wind speeds between 131-155 mpl,
storm surge of 13-18 feet expected.
Category 5-Wind speeds sver 155 mph, storm l
surge greater than 18 feet expected.TEXAS SHORES: new.,Q.
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Texas A & M University. Sea Grant College Program. Texas Shores, Volume 39, Number 4, Winter 2007, periodical, Winter 2007; College Station, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1633704/m1/4/: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.