July 16, 2024 • 32 mins
How have hurricanes shaped the history, culture, and political landscape of Texas? Join us on this episode of Talking Texas History as we unravel the profound effects these powerful storms had on the history of the Lone Star State. This a must-listen episode for anyone interested in starting to understanding the multifaceted impact of weather on Texas.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not
reflect the views of theinstitutions that employ us.
It is solely our thoughts andideas, based upon our
professional training and studyof the past.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that
explores Texas history beforeand beyond the Alamo.
Not only will we talk Texashistory, we'll visit with folks
who teach it, write it, supportit, and with some who've made it
and, of course, all of us wholive it and love it.
This is Talking Texas History.
Welcome to another edition ofTalking Texas History.
(00:46):
I'm Gene Preuss.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I'm Scott Sosby.
Gene, you're sitting in Houstonright now.
It's just had the devastationof Hurricane Beryl that came
through Everybody out of powerand everybody angry at
Centerpoint Energy.
So we should talk abouthurricanes, shouldn't we?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, you know B, you know barrel.
I think that was an apt namebecause it barreled through the
town uh texas yeah, east texas.
So, um, you know, scott, if wewe as historians, as as academic
historians, when we're teachingour classes, how often do we
(01:24):
bring up weather?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
The only time I can think of is, of course, the
hurricane of 1900 is aweather-related thing, and I
guess we can call probably thedust storm the dustbowl era.
Other than that, we probablydon't talk about weather that
much.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Right, we don't talk about weather, and right, we, we
don't talk about weather.
Uh, and, and clearly it had aneffect and and um, I don't know
many of our colleagues even wholook at weather in history, but
I think that there's a rich bodyof information and you and I
(02:03):
were talking about this earlier.
It does affect us.
It affects us, as you weresaying, everybody's mad at
center point right now.
The governor is saying thathe's going to look deep into it
and do some investigations.
I mean, it's a political issue,it becomes, it's in politics,
gets involved, it affectspeople's lives.
(02:25):
So there's that social andculture.
Certainly.
I mean, look our friends justto the east of us, in Louisiana,
there is a culture built aroundhurricanes.
So we I think this is something, an aspect that we, as
historians, often overlook, andso let's take a look at tropical
(02:49):
storms or hurricanes orcyclones, whatever you want to
call them In Texas.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
That's right and it's a topic that maybe somebody
should tackle this as a researchproject.
Now I was amazed when I startedlooking into this, getting
ready to do this.
According to David Roth, who'sa meteorologist with the
National Weather Service, hesaid since records have started
to be really kept in the 1850s,texas has been the location of a
(03:15):
tropical cyclone on 120different occasions.
120 tropical cyclones since the1850s, that fit texas, 64 of
them hurricanes.
Only florida has more than that.
Of course, like we've talkedabout earlier, that's because
both florida and texas are bigand stick out, so that's why
(03:35):
they get a lot of hurricaneslike you put yourself out there,
you're gonna get hit, rightyou're gonna get hit.
That's right, but of coursehurricanes have been hitting
texas in that area for a longtime.
The Spanish took note of a fewhurricanes that came through and
a lot of them had an effect onhistory.
Hurricanes have an effect onhistory.
Think about the hurricane thatthe Spanish noted off the Texas
(03:57):
coast in 1527 that hit thePanfilo Narvaez expedition 200
people scuttled their shirts,and that's why Alvar Nunez
Cabeza de Vaca came to Texas andmade his famous track across
Texas.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Right, well, you know , and and actually the, the
Navarro's expedition and Cabezade Vaca, I mean there were
several hurricanes right andapparently it was a big
hurricane season.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Either that or the same.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Either that or the same hurricane hit him twice
just hung out there waiting andI didn't get him the first time,
so he came back.
Uh, and we've seen hurricanesdo that right.
That one over florida last yearwas it that went back and forth
over the they'll come over andthen cross back and come back.
Yeah, well and and we've hadsome in Texas that have bounced
(04:47):
along the Gulf Coast.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Well, there's been some that go right up the whole
coast.
One of the famous hurricanes,carla.
Carla basically did a loop inthe Gulf, came near Texas shore,
looped back out and then cameback in Harvey.
You know, that's the big 2017storm that was so terrible for
houston and caused thedevastation.
That was one of its problems,if we'll remember that.
(05:10):
It kind of came inland and cameback out.
After it came down aroundrockport and then built up some
more energy and that's when itcame on again and dumped all
that rain in houston.
But we talk about influences inthe history.
Think about harvey, think abouthow much influence that we
don't know yet, but how muchthat will probably have later on
this barrel coming through somany things.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
So that is an important and important uh
aspect we probably should takeinto consideration so you, you
were saying that we've, wheneveryou were looking at this, so
we've had hurricanes that havegone back into the 50.
I'm certain that there musthave been hurricanes long before
that right, and that we don'teven know about.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Well, absolutely, I mean the word hurricane that we
get it.
I mean, depending on whichversion that you believe, that
comes from the word, it comes toEnglish through Spanish.
There's one version that saidthe Spanish got it from the
Taino indigenous people in theCaribbean.
There were Hurrican, which theSpanish spelled H-U-R-I-C-A-N,
(06:20):
supposedly meant their god ofevil, the Caribbean god of evil,
really Wow.
But then the Maya.
The Maya had a word.
They probably got from theTaino, or vice versa, also that
they came their word Huracan,h-u-r-i-c-a-n.
No, h-u-r-a-c-a-n, I'm sorry,that was their god of storm,
(06:43):
rain and storm water and fire.
So that's where the word comesfrom, spanish, and Spanish it's
still, you know, huracan.
That's what it still is.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, so it it had.
Certainly if the Mayan and theTaino and those older cultures,
it certainly was impressed themenough that they gave it a
personality, they gave it a name, they made it a character right
in their, in their cosmology.
(07:13):
That so, yeah, I mean what?
Speaker 1 (07:18):
the structures they built right, the philopola that
comes from us all are all builtto withstand windstorms.
Only really ignorant 20thcentury Americans were dumb
enough to say let's build bigcities right on the coast where
storms come.
And that's one reason why wehave so much devastation from
(07:39):
20th and 21st century storms.
It's because we chose to buildthese big, huge, industrial,
modern structure cities right onthe coastline where hurricanes
come.
It's not really very smart.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, we do this a lot.
I mean, I think I grew up inNew Braunfels, you know, and
we've had.
We sit on two rivers, and soone of my earliest memories when
I was a kid was the Great Floodof 1972.
And, interestingly enough, whenpeople rebuilt after that flood
(08:15):
, where did they build some ofthe nicest homes?
Speaker 1 (08:19):
in that floodplain.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
We do this.
You know, when I came throughhere in Houston, there were
people living just underneaththe aquifer, a reservoir, and
it's almost like we think thatwe can control the environment,
(08:41):
we can control the weather, theenvironment, we can control the
weather.
And, um, you're talking aboutdroughts and, and one of the
things hurricanes do curedroughts.
Uh, they, they, they come alongand and uh, throughout texas
history there have been severaldroughts and what ended those
were hurricanes coming acrosseither south texas or even up in
(09:02):
west texas.
The other thing we don't thinkabout hurricanes is they don't
end when they hit the land no,no, no, it's just.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It's like the amazing .
There's a uh in 1978, uhhurricane, uh, seal, uh forget
the name of it.
Was in 1978 anyway.
It actually went ashore and asfar west as albany, west Texas
32 inches of rain as a result ofthat storm.
And that's just amazing thatthat would be the case.
(09:34):
Del Rio a couple of times bystorms in the 20th century we
know it was flooded.
Del Rio is a long ways inlandto get storm-plugged this.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Oh yeah, uh, del rio is a long ways inland.
Uh, to get storm plug this.
Oh yeah, well, if we look atwe'll talk about this later on
with the galveston hurricane,you know kind of the big the big
daddy of the hurricanes as faras texas history is concerned.
Um, that thing continued on upalmost to new york yes, and was
terrible.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Dropped rain, allpped rain all over in the
Appalachian area.
Drowned people all over theplace.
It was a devastating tropicalstorm.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So I think that there's a lot of material and we
can only scratch the surfacehere and, as you say, we need to
maybe come up with some ideasand maybe encourage other
students and scholars who mightbe interested in looking at the
weather to look at this.
So tell us a little bit, sinceyou've done some work on
(10:35):
hurricanes and you were talkingabout some of the history of
them Is it a hurricane or is ita cyclone?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Well, a tropical cyclone is the meteorological
function of these things as theyform, as they twirl like a
cyclone, the term, of course,from that a hurricane gets it
termed a tropical cyclonebecomes a hurricane when it
reaches over 80 miles per hourof sustained winds.
If it reaches over 35 miles anhour it's a tropical storm.
(11:09):
And this is in the AtlanticBasin.
They have different names forthem in the Pacific Basin of
course, but we're dealing inTexas with these tropical
cyclones that become tropicalstorms and hurricanes and I
looked it up and said 120 ofthose since the 1850s had come
ashore in Texas.
The highest wind ever recordedby a hurricane in Texas was 1970
(11:34):
, celia at Aransas Pass, over180 miles per hour.
There may have been otherstorms that had higher winds but
the anometers broke before theycould record them, but they got
that one recorded at 180 milesan hour.
Amelia I saw that 1978 stormAmelia that hit the little town
(11:58):
of Bluff in the middle part ofthe coast.
Forty six inches of rain withAmelia, and Amelia went on as
far as Albany right just aroundAbilene in west Texas had 32
inches of rain from Amelia as itwent in.
So a lot of devastating effectsare going on of these storms.
(12:18):
Like you said, that keep going,but we've had a lot of very,
very famous storms right inTexas that affected a lot of
things other than that.
Of course we can't, but youcan't talk about hurricanes
right unless you talk aboutIndianola and the great
devastation of Indianola.
Indianola was the second largestport in Texas.
(12:39):
It's where Stephen F Austinbrought in most of the people
that settled in his colony.
Where Stephen F Austin broughtin most of the people that
settled in his colony, indianolawould have probably grown to be
a great Texas coastal town, buttwo hurricanes hit it one in
September 1875, which destroyedthree-quarters of the city.
But they didn't get the messageAgain.
Hey, let's build a town righton the Gulf to be a port.
(13:02):
They built the town back onthis and then in 1886, a huge
other storm came around andcompletely devastated the town
and it wasn't rebuilt.
So there's one that reallyaffected a great bit of Texas
history by any other storm.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Well, you know, you think about that and I bring
this up in my classes sometimeswhen I think about it.
But those Think of how Texashistory would be different,
think about how currentconditions will be different if
Indianola had remained the bigtown.
It would have been theGalveston, it would have been
the Houston of its.
(13:40):
Of.
Maybe today, right, that thatwas the big port, that's where
everybody was coming in of.
Maybe today, right, that wasthe big port, that's where
everybody was coming in.
And, as a result of thedestruction of Vendianola,
galveston and some of the otherup coastal places become the
(14:02):
ports.
Or in Corpus, right.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
They benefited from.
Well, I hate to say this, theybenefited from the destruction
of Indianola.
And you know, I thought aboutthat because when I was growing
up as a kid, my dad loved to gofishing.
We would go down to the coastonce a year and we would go to
Indianola, or you know,indianola, and it was nothing.
(14:28):
It was nothing there, um, andso I always, you know, when I
learned that that was the bigport at one time, it just, uh,
it struck me that.
Um, you know that when I wasgrowing up in the seventies, we
would go down.
It was ruins.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah, it still is.
You go down there, you know.
You look, you go down to theiruh in Calhoun County I believe
it was where Indianola is.
When you, when you look out inthere, if it's low tide, you can
catch the foundations of thebuildings still out there.
Now they're fairly well off.
You know, talk about how thecoastlines change.
Those foundations are nowpretty well off the what would
(15:07):
be the coast today.
They're set out in the water,you know.
But you're talking about wait,storms and things affect history
and people that take advantage.
Of course, in texas the bignotable storm is the great storm
of 1900 that hit galveston over8 000 people dead.
The great, fantastic book Ifyou haven't read it you should
read it on Isaac's Storm by EricLarson.
(15:28):
Eric.
Larson yeah, it was so fantasticand all, but the storm surge of
that thing might haveapproached 20 feet on this and
killed so many.
But think about the history ofdevastation.
It is that storm that spurredthe building of the Houston Ship
Channel and Houston becoming ahuge port, and they actually
took advantage of it to takethese things away from Galveston
(15:50):
, and also it built theGalveston Seawall and we have
that situation.
So think about how Galvestonwas.
You know, wall Street of theSouth and all this, and
Galveston still, to some extent,has still never recovered from
the storm of 1900s.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You know I was at a couple of stories about the
Galveston hurricane.
Of course there's many right,there's a whole museum, there's
movies, there's the Galveston.
The historical society has donea great job of trying to
recover a lot of the history.
But here in downtown Houstonthere's a church, I mean right
(16:31):
in downtown Houston, a Catholicchurch.
It collapsed the church andpicked up the bell tower, the
(16:53):
belfry and the roof and moved it.
And you know, I was talking tosomebody who's a historian of
that church and he had picturesand was just, and I, you know,
again, a lot of times when wetalk about history we just look
at the immediate effect or theevent and we don't look at what
happened elsewhere.
You know, scott, talking aboutone thing you brought up and I
(17:14):
want to circle back to this.
We spent time in Lubbock andone of the meteorologists in
Lubbock, you knowock, designed atornado force scale.
There's also a hurricane forcescale and you were talking about
that one wind speed being up to200 miles per hour.
(17:41):
So let me just tell everybodyhere hurricane wind scale Okay,
category one, 74 to 95 miles perhour, and I think that's not a
lot.
I mean, we were in Lubbock.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
That's a spring day in Lubbock sometimes.
I know.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Yeah, I mean we had 70,.
You know, one of the last yearsI was there, in 99, I think
they had a week of 70 mile perhour winds, it seemed like, or
at least two or three daysDuring the dust storm, they had
74 mile an hour winds.
It's hurricane force winds,category 2, 96 to 110.
(18:22):
That's pretty stout.
Category 3, 111 to 129.
Now when we had the DeRay showa couple of weeks ago, they came
through Houston in our backyardwe had winds going up to about
130.
So that's Category 3, Category 4.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Don't take out your fence, Phone it Gene.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, it was really amazing because it snapped that
fence back and forth like apancake.
Um 130 to 156 is a categoryfour, and 157 or better is a
category five, but that 200 milean hour winds, um, I mean god,
that should have a category ofits own you know it should.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Of course, hurricanes .
The big thing about hurricanesis the water that comes, and
hurricanes are the rain, therain, and they're massive storms
.
They're huge and they, you know,we think of them, they we.
Sometimes we think, well, theeye came on the eye, small, but
you know, hurricane force, wind,winds can, can spread 50, 60
miles out from the center and itswirls around.
(19:28):
And that's the thing about ahurricane and it's so
devastating.
Most of the destruction comesfrom the water, from storm surge
and the rain.
Of course, the Bula barrel thatjust came through when it hit
the coast it was wind damagethat was so bad because Bula had
some pretty strong winds asmuch.
It didn't kick the storm surgeup as much.
Uh about things.
(19:49):
But again, uh, we were talkingabout history, 1961, september
of 61, hurricane carla thatcomes ashore in texas.
Uh, it's one of the largestever hit tex, texas in modern
history and it came in with amassive storm that came ashore,
(20:09):
spawned tornadoes in Galveston,killed livestock and people,
hundreds of people and thousandsof head of livestock as it came
aboard.
It's the first real hurricanethat hits in the gulf.
That hits after we built modernstructures and modern
infrastructure and modernindustrial and we had all those
(20:31):
refineries and various otherpetrochemical factories right
down there on the coast whichwas not very smart to build them
there and it just it flattenedthem when it came aboard.
And the thing about carla isthat this you know before that
states had to.
You know recovery was left upto the states.
The federal governmentgenerally did not get involved
and if they did, it had to be along political process of
(20:53):
passing bills in congress.
The state of texas could notafford to rebuild after carla.
They couldn't afford to do thisbecause it's really a modern
storm that came ashore andthat's one of the big things
about now is the billions andbillions of dollars of
destruction.
Carla is one of the impetus.
Although it takes it 15 moreyears.
Carla is one of the firstimpetus that we get FEMA and why
(21:14):
FEMA is developed as a federalprogram because of Texas
couldn't afford to rebuild afterCarla and if Lyndon Johnson had
not been vice president and soinfluential, who knows whether
they would have got the fundingfrom the federal government to
actually rebuild from that?
Carla also spawned the careerof Dan Rather, of course very
famous, as he was a youngreporter from Wharton working
(21:36):
for a Houston television station, and he went down to report on
Carla and that gave himnotoriety in.
Cbs, hired him and the rest ishistory.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
That is incredible, Carla.
You're talking about 43 deathsas a result of Carla.
You had, they say, $325 millionin damages, but that was 1971
money.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
That was some serious .
That was when, like old peoplelike say, that's when it was
real money, right, I say, I sayold people like we're not old
people.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Well, we weren't then , yeah, I mean, but it's just
amazing and I was looking at themap of of where the rainfall
had you were saying you know 100mile.
That was rainfall from Carlastretched all the way from the
tip of texas in the united inthe united states.
Right, because it it camethrough other areas.
(22:36):
Right, it came through othercountries, from the tip of the
united states to canada up pastlake superior.
It was a massive storm.
(23:05):
Student working on a project onthese hurricanes.
There is a lot of materialoutside of texas.
Although you know it's.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
It's maybe not as important to texas historians
but it certainly is impactful to, uh, to history yeah, here at
talking texas history, we'reprovincial son of a guns, we
don't really care about whathappens.
Well, again, all these thingsthat Houston right now has very
stringent codes aboutskyscrapers it didn't protect it
(23:40):
a whole lot from the derecho,of course, but there's very
stringent codes about buildingthese things A lot of that comes
about because of various stormsthat come through.
A lot of that comes aboutbecause of various storms that
come through, but, mostimportantly, ones we could
probably remember August of 1983, alicia came through, hurricane
Alicia and blew out so many ofthe big glass things in the
(24:01):
Houston downtown area when itcame through and dumped a
massive amount of rain and diddamage on that.
You know Houston sits in aplane.
It's one of the most vulnerablecities in the United States to
hurricane damage because of notjust where it sits real close to
the coast, but it also sits ina depression.
(24:24):
Water pools and floods Houstonwell, you know, you live there
it rains an inch and a half andthe whole city is flooded and
comes to a stop.
Because of that, but alsobecause Houston doesn't have
building codes and stringentbuilding codes enough to
withstand some of these damagesthat could come.
For example, you don't buildanything in Miami that's not
(24:45):
hurricane-proof because theyknow they come through.
That same thing doesn't applyin Houston.
Our codes are a little lax onthat.
And now, maybe barrel willchange things when you have this
thing uh, a barrel.
And then, of course, harvey,which is so devastating.
Harvey was a freak of nature,though the way it happened.
I mean, there's no way toactually prepare for something
like harvey, where a tropicalcyclone becomes basically
(25:08):
stationary over a hugepopulation area and dumps 17 to
18 inches of rain in two days,and it's just oh.
But of course, again, you'retalking about the reservoir.
People built housingdevelopments in the middle of a
reservoir that was built in the1940s to keep downtown Houston
(25:29):
from flooding.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Who the hell let that happen?
Yeah it, you know, harvey.
When it came through I hadfriends who got on the highways
and sat there for an entire dayand not moving, and it's one of
(25:54):
the reasons why, now you know,everybody you know says oh well,
Houston, you've got 10 lanes ofinterstate 10 and now the
expansion of Interstate 45 andwidening those is to accommodate
(26:16):
people evacuating.
You know you're talking aboutFEMA and helping people recover
and institutions like theAmerican Red Cross, who also
service people during thenatural disasters occur.
But also think about highwayconstruction and think about
(26:38):
things like widening the roads.
There was a hurricane that Idon't know if it was a hurricane
or a tropical storm early inthe 1990s.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Hurricane or a tropical storm, um early in the
1990s and and um it, it took out.
All of it may have been, it mayhave been allison.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
it was also was 89, wasn't she?
Uh, 2001.
It took out banking across theUnited States because, as it
turned out, a lot of banks wererouting their ATMs and
electronic banking throughunderground tunnels under
(27:25):
Houston and when those floodedand it wiped them out, the
electronics out, it affectedbanks all across the US.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
And.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
I mean, that is a story right there.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
It is.
I think, yeah, and that's thethings that hurricanes in the
modern time, you know, we'vetalked about.
Yeah, they used to hit, quiteoften hit the Caribbean, but you
didn't build right there, youdidn't put all this
infrastructure.
But we do.
Now we have.
I mean, what is it?
I don't know the exact number,but I remember reading one time
in the United States over 60% ofthe population in the United
(28:06):
States lives within 50 miles ofthe coastline of the nation.
Think about that.
That is amazing.
Now, of course, a lot of that'sin California and on the
Pacific Northwest.
They don't have to worry abouthurricanes, they have to worry
about tsunamis and earthquakesdestroying everything.
But how sustainable is that forus?
(28:30):
Particularly?
We talked about, uh, climatechange, uh, bringing on these
more powerful hurricanes.
I mean, barrel grew into acategory five hurricane at one
point in june.
That doesn't happen.
That just doesn't happen.
Uh, it hasn't happened before.
On this, what's going to happenin september?
Speaker 2 (28:51):
yeah, I don't.
Yeah, that's when a lot of thehurricanes hit, you know.
And one thing that we off thatI've just come to notice because
living here in houston I hadnever known um, that saharan
dust blows in and it modify ormollifies a lot of the hurricane
(29:13):
activity, because this is wherea lot of tropical storms start,
is in Africa, off the coast of.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Africa.
Yeah, there's those tropicalwaves that come off the coast of
West Africa and we get thatdust, that comes in and it calms
it down a little bit.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
And it calms it down a little bit.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
And you know how long has this Saharan dust been
blowing over to the UnitedStates and over places like
Texas, enough to create a littleAfrica, I suppose in Texas, and
that's probably why we have oil.
Yeah, could be there's.
You know lots of things.
Well, oil is another thing,where we discovered oil, where
so much of our oilinfrastructure is and the
refineries are right on thecoast.
What's going to happen when,finally, that big, huge Category
(29:58):
5 comes slamming into the upperTexas Gulf Coast and takes out?
I mean, what is it?
Three of the four largestrefineries in the world are on
the Texas upper Gulf coast.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Well, what was the last time the United States
built a refinery?
Speaker 1 (30:16):
I don't know A long time ago.
I don't have that exact number,but it's been quite a long time
.
It's like 40 years ago, I thinkSomething like that, yeah, and
they take all those out andwhat's?
You know, that's what's goingto happen to our world energy
supply when that happens.
Has anybody thought about that?
Or is that just somethingthat's going by the wayside?
Weather does make a bigdifference and we should look
(30:36):
more into it.
So that's what this is, gene aclarion call for scholars to say
listen, we need to look at theeffects of weather on history
and how it's changed things.
So some young person out therelooking for a project that's
listening to Talking TexasHistory?
You're probably not, but if youare, grab this as a topic and
get hold of it.
It'd be a great topic forsomebody to research.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
In fact, scott, I think what we ought to do next
and we talked about somehurricanes in general upcoming
episode let's do a follow-upwhere we pick each of us our
five most significant hurricanesso we're going to rate them
(31:19):
okay or we'll do that, we'll.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
We'll go and do our due diligence and we'll come
back and do that.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
That's a deal yeah, there's a lot to think about,
and I mean, we just, like I said, we just scratched the surface
on things that are of historicalsignificance, and I would like
to see some more people do somedeep dives on this.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
I would too.
All right, gene, that soundsfantastic.
You know we don't have guests,people just have to listen to us
talking.
That may you know we might onlyhave people.
That only made through fiveminutes of this right.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Right.
So if you were to ask us whatdo we know?
Is that we know we should alsohave some guests on.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
We should also have some guests.
What do we know?
We know we don't know a wholelot.
That's what we know.
That's why we're asking peoplewhat they know because we don't
know a whole lot and Because wedon't know all of them, and so
we can start plagiarizing andcribbing off of them right.
Expand our knowledge.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
All right, scott.
Well, have a good one and I'mglad you guys are safe.
Okay, bye.
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not
reflect the views of theinstitutions that employ us.
It is solely our thoughts andideas, based upon our
professional training and studyof the past.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that
explores Texas history beforeand beyond the Alamo.
Not only will we talk Texashistory, we'll visit with folks
who teach it, write it, supportit, and with some who've made it
and, of course, all of us wholive it and love it.
This is Talking Texas History.
Welcome to another edition ofTalking Texas History.
(00:46):
I'm Gene Preuss.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
I'm Scott Sosby.
Gene, you're sitting in Houstonright now.
It's just had the devastationof Hurricane Beryl that came
through Everybody out of powerand everybody angry at
Centerpoint Energy.
So we should talk abouthurricanes, shouldn't we?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, you know B, you know barrel.
I think that was an apt namebecause it barreled through the
town uh texas yeah, east texas.
So, um, you know, scott, if wewe as historians, as as academic
historians, when we're teachingour classes, how often do we
(01:24):
bring up weather?
Speaker 1 (01:27):
The only time I can think of is, of course, the
hurricane of 1900 is aweather-related thing, and I
guess we can call probably thedust storm the dustbowl era.
Other than that, we probablydon't talk about weather that
much.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Right, we don't talk about weather, and right, we, we
don't talk about weather.
Uh, and, and clearly it had aneffect and and um, I don't know
many of our colleagues even wholook at weather in history, but
I think that there's a rich bodyof information and you and I
(02:03):
were talking about this earlier.
It does affect us.
It affects us, as you weresaying, everybody's mad at
center point right now.
The governor is saying thathe's going to look deep into it
and do some investigations.
I mean, it's a political issue,it becomes, it's in politics,
gets involved, it affectspeople's lives.
(02:25):
So there's that social andculture.
Certainly.
I mean, look our friends justto the east of us, in Louisiana,
there is a culture built aroundhurricanes.
So we I think this is something, an aspect that we, as
historians, often overlook, andso let's take a look at tropical
(02:49):
storms or hurricanes orcyclones, whatever you want to
call them In Texas.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
That's right and it's a topic that maybe somebody
should tackle this as a researchproject.
Now I was amazed when I startedlooking into this, getting
ready to do this.
According to David Roth, who'sa meteorologist with the
National Weather Service, hesaid since records have started
to be really kept in the 1850s,texas has been the location of a
(03:15):
tropical cyclone on 120different occasions.
120 tropical cyclones since the1850s, that fit texas, 64 of
them hurricanes.
Only florida has more than that.
Of course, like we've talkedabout earlier, that's because
both florida and texas are bigand stick out, so that's why
(03:35):
they get a lot of hurricaneslike you put yourself out there,
you're gonna get hit, rightyou're gonna get hit.
That's right, but of coursehurricanes have been hitting
texas in that area for a longtime.
The Spanish took note of a fewhurricanes that came through and
a lot of them had an effect onhistory.
Hurricanes have an effect onhistory.
Think about the hurricane thatthe Spanish noted off the Texas
(03:57):
coast in 1527 that hit thePanfilo Narvaez expedition 200
people scuttled their shirts,and that's why Alvar Nunez
Cabeza de Vaca came to Texas andmade his famous track across
Texas.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Right, well, you know , and and actually the, the
Navarro's expedition and Cabezade Vaca, I mean there were
several hurricanes right andapparently it was a big
hurricane season.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Either that or the same.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Either that or the same hurricane hit him twice
just hung out there waiting andI didn't get him the first time,
so he came back.
Uh, and we've seen hurricanesdo that right.
That one over florida last yearwas it that went back and forth
over the they'll come over andthen cross back and come back.
Yeah, well and and we've hadsome in Texas that have bounced
(04:47):
along the Gulf Coast.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Well, there's been some that go right up the whole
coast.
One of the famous hurricanes,carla.
Carla basically did a loop inthe Gulf, came near Texas shore,
looped back out and then cameback in Harvey.
You know, that's the big 2017storm that was so terrible for
houston and caused thedevastation.
That was one of its problems,if we'll remember that.
(05:10):
It kind of came inland and cameback out.
After it came down aroundrockport and then built up some
more energy and that's when itcame on again and dumped all
that rain in houston.
But we talk about influences inthe history.
Think about harvey, think abouthow much influence that we
don't know yet, but how muchthat will probably have later on
this barrel coming through somany things.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
So that is an important and important uh
aspect we probably should takeinto consideration so you, you
were saying that we've, wheneveryou were looking at this, so
we've had hurricanes that havegone back into the 50.
I'm certain that there musthave been hurricanes long before
that right, and that we don'teven know about.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Well, absolutely, I mean the word hurricane that we
get it.
I mean, depending on whichversion that you believe, that
comes from the word, it comes toEnglish through Spanish.
There's one version that saidthe Spanish got it from the
Taino indigenous people in theCaribbean.
There were Hurrican, which theSpanish spelled H-U-R-I-C-A-N,
(06:20):
supposedly meant their god ofevil, the Caribbean god of evil,
really Wow.
But then the Maya.
The Maya had a word.
They probably got from theTaino, or vice versa, also that
they came their word Huracan,h-u-r-i-c-a-n.
No, h-u-r-a-c-a-n, I'm sorry,that was their god of storm,
(06:43):
rain and storm water and fire.
So that's where the word comesfrom, spanish, and Spanish it's
still, you know, huracan.
That's what it still is.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yeah, so it it had.
Certainly if the Mayan and theTaino and those older cultures,
it certainly was impressed themenough that they gave it a
personality, they gave it a name, they made it a character right
in their, in their cosmology.
(07:13):
That so, yeah, I mean what?
Speaker 1 (07:18):
the structures they built right, the philopola that
comes from us all are all builtto withstand windstorms.
Only really ignorant 20thcentury Americans were dumb
enough to say let's build bigcities right on the coast where
storms come.
And that's one reason why wehave so much devastation from
(07:39):
20th and 21st century storms.
It's because we chose to buildthese big, huge, industrial,
modern structure cities right onthe coastline where hurricanes
come.
It's not really very smart.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Yeah, we do this a lot.
I mean, I think I grew up inNew Braunfels, you know, and
we've had.
We sit on two rivers, and soone of my earliest memories when
I was a kid was the Great Floodof 1972.
And, interestingly enough, whenpeople rebuilt after that flood
(08:15):
, where did they build some ofthe nicest homes?
Speaker 1 (08:19):
in that floodplain.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
We do this.
You know, when I came throughhere in Houston, there were
people living just underneaththe aquifer, a reservoir, and
it's almost like we think thatwe can control the environment,
(08:41):
we can control the weather, theenvironment, we can control the
weather.
And, um, you're talking aboutdroughts and, and one of the
things hurricanes do curedroughts.
Uh, they, they, they come alongand and uh, throughout texas
history there have been severaldroughts and what ended those
were hurricanes coming acrosseither south texas or even up in
(09:02):
west texas.
The other thing we don't thinkabout hurricanes is they don't
end when they hit the land no,no, no, it's just.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
It's like the amazing .
There's a uh in 1978, uhhurricane, uh, seal, uh forget
the name of it.
Was in 1978 anyway.
It actually went ashore and asfar west as albany, west Texas
32 inches of rain as a result ofthat storm.
And that's just amazing thatthat would be the case.
(09:34):
Del Rio a couple of times bystorms in the 20th century we
know it was flooded.
Del Rio is a long ways inlandto get storm-plugged this.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Oh yeah, uh, del rio is a long ways inland.
Uh, to get storm plug this.
Oh yeah, well, if we look atwe'll talk about this later on
with the galveston hurricane,you know kind of the big the big
daddy of the hurricanes as faras texas history is concerned.
Um, that thing continued on upalmost to new york yes, and was
terrible.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Dropped rain, allpped rain all over in the
Appalachian area.
Drowned people all over theplace.
It was a devastating tropicalstorm.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
So I think that there's a lot of material and we
can only scratch the surfacehere and, as you say, we need to
maybe come up with some ideasand maybe encourage other
students and scholars who mightbe interested in looking at the
weather to look at this.
So tell us a little bit, sinceyou've done some work on
(10:35):
hurricanes and you were talkingabout some of the history of
them Is it a hurricane or is ita cyclone?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Well, a tropical cyclone is the meteorological
function of these things as theyform, as they twirl like a
cyclone, the term, of course,from that a hurricane gets it
termed a tropical cyclonebecomes a hurricane when it
reaches over 80 miles per hourof sustained winds.
If it reaches over 35 miles anhour it's a tropical storm.
(11:09):
And this is in the AtlanticBasin.
They have different names forthem in the Pacific Basin of
course, but we're dealing inTexas with these tropical
cyclones that become tropicalstorms and hurricanes and I
looked it up and said 120 ofthose since the 1850s had come
ashore in Texas.
The highest wind ever recordedby a hurricane in Texas was 1970
(11:34):
, celia at Aransas Pass, over180 miles per hour.
There may have been otherstorms that had higher winds but
the anometers broke before theycould record them, but they got
that one recorded at 180 milesan hour.
Amelia I saw that 1978 stormAmelia that hit the little town
(11:58):
of Bluff in the middle part ofthe coast.
Forty six inches of rain withAmelia, and Amelia went on as
far as Albany right just aroundAbilene in west Texas had 32
inches of rain from Amelia as itwent in.
So a lot of devastating effectsare going on of these storms.
(12:18):
Like you said, that keep going,but we've had a lot of very,
very famous storms right inTexas that affected a lot of
things other than that.
Of course we can't, but youcan't talk about hurricanes
right unless you talk aboutIndianola and the great
devastation of Indianola.
Indianola was the second largestport in Texas.
(12:39):
It's where Stephen F Austinbrought in most of the people
that settled in his colony.
Where Stephen F Austin broughtin most of the people that
settled in his colony, indianolawould have probably grown to be
a great Texas coastal town, buttwo hurricanes hit it one in
September 1875, which destroyedthree-quarters of the city.
But they didn't get the messageAgain.
Hey, let's build a town righton the Gulf to be a port.
(13:02):
They built the town back onthis and then in 1886, a huge
other storm came around andcompletely devastated the town
and it wasn't rebuilt.
So there's one that reallyaffected a great bit of Texas
history by any other storm.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Well, you know, you think about that and I bring
this up in my classes sometimeswhen I think about it.
But those Think of how Texashistory would be different,
think about how currentconditions will be different if
Indianola had remained the bigtown.
It would have been theGalveston, it would have been
the Houston of its.
(13:40):
Of.
Maybe today, right, that thatwas the big port, that's where
everybody was coming in of.
Maybe today, right, that wasthe big port, that's where
everybody was coming in.
And, as a result of thedestruction of Vendianola,
galveston and some of the otherup coastal places become the
(14:02):
ports.
Or in Corpus, right.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
They benefited from.
Well, I hate to say this, theybenefited from the destruction
of Indianola.
And you know, I thought aboutthat because when I was growing
up as a kid, my dad loved to gofishing.
We would go down to the coastonce a year and we would go to
Indianola, or you know,indianola, and it was nothing.
(14:28):
It was nothing there, um, andso I always, you know, when I
learned that that was the bigport at one time, it just, uh,
it struck me that.
Um, you know that when I wasgrowing up in the seventies, we
would go down.
It was ruins.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah, it still is.
You go down there, you know.
You look, you go down to theiruh in Calhoun County I believe
it was where Indianola is.
When you, when you look out inthere, if it's low tide, you can
catch the foundations of thebuildings still out there.
Now they're fairly well off.
You know, talk about how thecoastlines change.
Those foundations are nowpretty well off the what would
(15:07):
be the coast today.
They're set out in the water,you know.
But you're talking about wait,storms and things affect history
and people that take advantage.
Of course, in texas the bignotable storm is the great storm
of 1900 that hit galveston over8 000 people dead.
The great, fantastic book Ifyou haven't read it you should
read it on Isaac's Storm by EricLarson.
(15:28):
Eric.
Larson yeah, it was so fantasticand all, but the storm surge of
that thing might haveapproached 20 feet on this and
killed so many.
But think about the history ofdevastation.
It is that storm that spurredthe building of the Houston Ship
Channel and Houston becoming ahuge port, and they actually
took advantage of it to takethese things away from Galveston
(15:50):
, and also it built theGalveston Seawall and we have
that situation.
So think about how Galvestonwas.
You know, wall Street of theSouth and all this, and
Galveston still, to some extent,has still never recovered from
the storm of 1900s.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
You know I was at a couple of stories about the
Galveston hurricane.
Of course there's many right,there's a whole museum, there's
movies, there's the Galveston.
The historical society has donea great job of trying to
recover a lot of the history.
But here in downtown Houstonthere's a church, I mean right
(16:31):
in downtown Houston, a Catholicchurch.
It collapsed the church andpicked up the bell tower, the
(16:53):
belfry and the roof and moved it.
And you know, I was talking tosomebody who's a historian of
that church and he had picturesand was just, and I, you know,
again, a lot of times when wetalk about history we just look
at the immediate effect or theevent and we don't look at what
happened elsewhere.
You know, scott, talking aboutone thing you brought up and I
(17:14):
want to circle back to this.
We spent time in Lubbock andone of the meteorologists in
Lubbock, you knowock, designed atornado force scale.
There's also a hurricane forcescale and you were talking about
that one wind speed being up to200 miles per hour.
(17:41):
So let me just tell everybodyhere hurricane wind scale Okay,
category one, 74 to 95 miles perhour, and I think that's not a
lot.
I mean, we were in Lubbock.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
That's a spring day in Lubbock sometimes.
I know.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Yeah, I mean we had 70,.
You know, one of the last yearsI was there, in 99, I think
they had a week of 70 mile perhour winds, it seemed like, or
at least two or three daysDuring the dust storm, they had
74 mile an hour winds.
It's hurricane force winds,category 2, 96 to 110.
(18:22):
That's pretty stout.
Category 3, 111 to 129.
Now when we had the DeRay showa couple of weeks ago, they came
through Houston in our backyardwe had winds going up to about
130.
So that's Category 3, Category 4.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Don't take out your fence, Phone it Gene.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, it was really amazing because it snapped that
fence back and forth like apancake.
Um 130 to 156 is a categoryfour, and 157 or better is a
category five, but that 200 milean hour winds, um, I mean god,
that should have a category ofits own you know it should.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Of course, hurricanes .
The big thing about hurricanesis the water that comes, and
hurricanes are the rain, therain, and they're massive storms
.
They're huge and they, you know,we think of them, they we.
Sometimes we think, well, theeye came on the eye, small, but
you know, hurricane force, wind,winds can, can spread 50, 60
miles out from the center and itswirls around.
(19:28):
And that's the thing about ahurricane and it's so
devastating.
Most of the destruction comesfrom the water, from storm surge
and the rain.
Of course, the Bula barrel thatjust came through when it hit
the coast it was wind damagethat was so bad because Bula had
some pretty strong winds asmuch.
It didn't kick the storm surgeup as much.
Uh about things.
(19:49):
But again, uh, we were talkingabout history, 1961, september
of 61, hurricane carla thatcomes ashore in texas.
Uh, it's one of the largestever hit tex, texas in modern
history and it came in with amassive storm that came ashore,
(20:09):
spawned tornadoes in Galveston,killed livestock and people,
hundreds of people and thousandsof head of livestock as it came
aboard.
It's the first real hurricanethat hits in the gulf.
That hits after we built modernstructures and modern
infrastructure and modernindustrial and we had all those
(20:31):
refineries and various otherpetrochemical factories right
down there on the coast whichwas not very smart to build them
there and it just it flattenedthem when it came aboard.
And the thing about carla isthat this you know before that
states had to.
You know recovery was left upto the states.
The federal governmentgenerally did not get involved
and if they did, it had to be along political process of
(20:53):
passing bills in congress.
The state of texas could notafford to rebuild after carla.
They couldn't afford to do thisbecause it's really a modern
storm that came ashore andthat's one of the big things
about now is the billions andbillions of dollars of
destruction.
Carla is one of the impetus.
Although it takes it 15 moreyears.
Carla is one of the firstimpetus that we get FEMA and why
(21:14):
FEMA is developed as a federalprogram because of Texas
couldn't afford to rebuild afterCarla and if Lyndon Johnson had
not been vice president and soinfluential, who knows whether
they would have got the fundingfrom the federal government to
actually rebuild from that?
Carla also spawned the careerof Dan Rather, of course very
famous, as he was a youngreporter from Wharton working
(21:36):
for a Houston television station, and he went down to report on
Carla and that gave himnotoriety in.
Cbs, hired him and the rest ishistory.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
That is incredible, Carla.
You're talking about 43 deathsas a result of Carla.
You had, they say, $325 millionin damages, but that was 1971
money.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
That was some serious .
That was when, like old peoplelike say, that's when it was
real money, right, I say, I sayold people like we're not old
people.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Well, we weren't then , yeah, I mean, but it's just
amazing and I was looking at themap of of where the rainfall
had you were saying you know 100mile.
That was rainfall from Carlastretched all the way from the
tip of texas in the united inthe united states.
Right, because it it camethrough other areas.
(22:36):
Right, it came through othercountries, from the tip of the
united states to canada up pastlake superior.
It was a massive storm.
(23:05):
Student working on a project onthese hurricanes.
There is a lot of materialoutside of texas.
Although you know it's.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
It's maybe not as important to texas historians
but it certainly is impactful to, uh, to history yeah, here at
talking texas history, we'reprovincial son of a guns, we
don't really care about whathappens.
Well, again, all these thingsthat Houston right now has very
stringent codes aboutskyscrapers it didn't protect it
(23:40):
a whole lot from the derecho,of course, but there's very
stringent codes about buildingthese things A lot of that comes
about because of various stormsthat come through.
A lot of that comes aboutbecause of various storms that
come through, but, mostimportantly, ones we could
probably remember August of 1983, alicia came through, hurricane
Alicia and blew out so many ofthe big glass things in the
(24:01):
Houston downtown area when itcame through and dumped a
massive amount of rain and diddamage on that.
You know Houston sits in aplane.
It's one of the most vulnerablecities in the United States to
hurricane damage because of notjust where it sits real close to
the coast, but it also sits ina depression.
(24:24):
Water pools and floods Houstonwell, you know, you live there
it rains an inch and a half andthe whole city is flooded and
comes to a stop.
Because of that, but alsobecause Houston doesn't have
building codes and stringentbuilding codes enough to
withstand some of these damagesthat could come.
For example, you don't buildanything in Miami that's not
(24:45):
hurricane-proof because theyknow they come through.
That same thing doesn't applyin Houston.
Our codes are a little lax onthat.
And now, maybe barrel willchange things when you have this
thing uh, a barrel.
And then, of course, harvey,which is so devastating.
Harvey was a freak of nature,though the way it happened.
I mean, there's no way toactually prepare for something
like harvey, where a tropicalcyclone becomes basically
(25:08):
stationary over a hugepopulation area and dumps 17 to
18 inches of rain in two days,and it's just oh.
But of course, again, you'retalking about the reservoir.
People built housingdevelopments in the middle of a
reservoir that was built in the1940s to keep downtown Houston
(25:29):
from flooding.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Who the hell let that happen?
Yeah it, you know, harvey.
When it came through I hadfriends who got on the highways
and sat there for an entire dayand not moving, and it's one of
(25:54):
the reasons why, now you know,everybody you know says oh well,
Houston, you've got 10 lanes ofinterstate 10 and now the
expansion of Interstate 45 andwidening those is to accommodate
(26:16):
people evacuating.
You know you're talking aboutFEMA and helping people recover
and institutions like theAmerican Red Cross, who also
service people during thenatural disasters occur.
But also think about highwayconstruction and think about
(26:38):
things like widening the roads.
There was a hurricane that Idon't know if it was a hurricane
or a tropical storm early inthe 1990s.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Hurricane or a tropical storm, um early in the
1990s and and um it, it took out.
All of it may have been, it mayhave been allison.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
it was also was 89, wasn't she?
Uh, 2001.
It took out banking across theUnited States because, as it
turned out, a lot of banks wererouting their ATMs and
electronic banking throughunderground tunnels under
(27:25):
Houston and when those floodedand it wiped them out, the
electronics out, it affectedbanks all across the US.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
And.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
I mean, that is a story right there.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
It is.
I think, yeah, and that's thethings that hurricanes in the
modern time, you know, we'vetalked about.
Yeah, they used to hit, quiteoften hit the Caribbean, but you
didn't build right there, youdidn't put all this
infrastructure.
But we do.
Now we have.
I mean, what is it?
I don't know the exact number,but I remember reading one time
in the United States over 60% ofthe population in the United
(28:06):
States lives within 50 miles ofthe coastline of the nation.
Think about that.
That is amazing.
Now, of course, a lot of that'sin California and on the
Pacific Northwest.
They don't have to worry abouthurricanes, they have to worry
about tsunamis and earthquakesdestroying everything.
But how sustainable is that forus?
(28:30):
Particularly?
We talked about, uh, climatechange, uh, bringing on these
more powerful hurricanes.
I mean, barrel grew into acategory five hurricane at one
point in june.
That doesn't happen.
That just doesn't happen.
Uh, it hasn't happened before.
On this, what's going to happenin september?
Speaker 2 (28:51):
yeah, I don't.
Yeah, that's when a lot of thehurricanes hit, you know.
And one thing that we off thatI've just come to notice because
living here in houston I hadnever known um, that saharan
dust blows in and it modify ormollifies a lot of the hurricane
(29:13):
activity, because this is wherea lot of tropical storms start,
is in Africa, off the coast of.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
Africa.
Yeah, there's those tropicalwaves that come off the coast of
West Africa and we get thatdust, that comes in and it calms
it down a little bit.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
And it calms it down a little bit.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
And you know how long has this Saharan dust been
blowing over to the UnitedStates and over places like
Texas, enough to create a littleAfrica, I suppose in Texas, and
that's probably why we have oil.
Yeah, could be there's.
You know lots of things.
Well, oil is another thing,where we discovered oil, where
so much of our oilinfrastructure is and the
refineries are right on thecoast.
What's going to happen when,finally, that big, huge Category
(29:58):
5 comes slamming into the upperTexas Gulf Coast and takes out?
I mean, what is it?
Three of the four largestrefineries in the world are on
the Texas upper Gulf coast.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Well, what was the last time the United States
built a refinery?
Speaker 1 (30:16):
I don't know A long time ago.
I don't have that exact number,but it's been quite a long time
.
It's like 40 years ago, I thinkSomething like that, yeah, and
they take all those out andwhat's?
You know, that's what's goingto happen to our world energy
supply when that happens.
Has anybody thought about that?
Or is that just somethingthat's going by the wayside?
Weather does make a bigdifference and we should look
(30:36):
more into it.
So that's what this is, gene aclarion call for scholars to say
listen, we need to look at theeffects of weather on history
and how it's changed things.
So some young person out therelooking for a project that's
listening to Talking TexasHistory?
You're probably not, but if youare, grab this as a topic and
get hold of it.
It'd be a great topic forsomebody to research.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
In fact, scott, I think what we ought to do next
and we talked about somehurricanes in general upcoming
episode let's do a follow-upwhere we pick each of us our
five most significant hurricanesso we're going to rate them
(31:19):
okay or we'll do that, we'll.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
We'll go and do our due diligence and we'll come
back and do that.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
That's a deal yeah, there's a lot to think about,
and I mean, we just, like I said, we just scratched the surface
on things that are of historicalsignificance, and I would like
to see some more people do somedeep dives on this.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
I would too.
All right, gene, that soundsfantastic.
You know we don't have guests,people just have to listen to us
talking.
That may you know we might onlyhave people.
That only made through fiveminutes of this right.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
Right.
So if you were to ask us whatdo we know?
Is that we know we should alsohave some guests on.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
We should also have some guests.
What do we know?
We know we don't know a wholelot.
That's what we know.
That's why we're asking peoplewhat they know because we don't
know a whole lot and Because wedon't know all of them, and so
we can start plagiarizing andcribbing off of them right.
Expand our knowledge.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
All right, scott.
Well, have a good one and I'mglad you guys are safe.
Okay, bye.
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