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The Island Moon 15201 S. Padre Island Drive Ste. 250 Corpus Christi, TX. 78418
Island Moon Section B
August 12, 2011
Photo by Miles Merwin
Phone (361) 949-7700 ● Email editor@islandmoon.com
Next Publication Date: 8/26/2011
Year 15, Issue 394
How Many Licks?
GulfBreeze Make Promises Happen By Mike Murphy In late June this year the Make Promises Happen (MPH) group returned to Port Aransas for a two day surf camp for persons with disabilities and serious illnesses. Local surfers, Roxanne and Cliff Schlabach have coordinated this event from the beginning with the help of the Coastal Bend Surfrider Foundation (CBSF) and other volunteers. This camp has always been a huge success.
This is McKayla Long she is the 7 yr old granddaughter of Jerry and Sharon Watkins. McKayla always has a project and can be very creative and disciplined. Since everyone else had tried and failed with the tootsie roll thing (she wanted to do something original to become famous and maybe be in the Guinness book of records) she decided to find out how many licks it would take to reach the center of a blow pop with out biting. So McKayla kept tally marks for every lick and found out it takes 930 licks to make the gum show and 2785 licks to make all the candy around the gum disappear. Oh... and it only took four days but makes your tongue a little sore! Way to go McKayla! Photo by Jerry Watkins
Organizers…..local connections
Standin’ and Stylin’ at Surf Camp The Schlabach’s have surfed and been involved in the loThe recent surf camp was the seventh year for cal surf scene for nearly half a century. Cliff the MPH group from Guthrie, Oklahoma. has been an officer and head judge for the TexMPH…..changing lives one camp at a time as Gulf Surfing Association and U. S. Surfing Federation for over two decades. Roxanne The Central Christian Camp and Conference helped coordinate surf contests during this Center provides outdoor recreational opportime. Cliff joined the Coastal Bend Surfrid- tunities to youth and adults ages 6 and older er Foundation (CBSF) and served as Chairman with any disability. Campers are paired with and Vice Chair for several years. volunteer counselors for archery, boating, Roxanne’s brother, Spencer Bowen, has been fishing, swimming, arts and crafts for various very involved with the Central Christian Camp MPH events throughout the year with weekends and week-long camps.
Port A Pirates Board Dolphin Cruise
James Wheeler is in charge of fund raising for the Central Christian Camp and Conference programs and is in charge of the Make Promises Happen camping program. He has been a volunteer counselor for over 14 years and directs several of the camps each year. Bryce Chitwood is primarily responsible for reservations and scheduling for retreat and conference events. He maintains the activity and staff schedules and is the contact for visitor and tour information.
Group photo of campers and volunteers in Oklahoma since 1995, serving as Executive Director for the past six years. Spencer initiated the surf camp idea working with the Schlabach’s to make the first camp become a reality. Island Happenings Continued on page B 4
Lonetta Sprague and Robert Franklin are founders and co-directors of the MPH program Created in 1981. Over the years, both
GulfBreeze Continued on Page B2
A little hurricane trivia
Hurricanes and Droughts, Black Fingernails, and Naming Storms
By Dale Rankin National heat waves and hurricanes on the Texas coast have historically gone together. As low pressure zones produce drought in the midwest they tend to draw hurricanes toward Texas. The most glaring example came in 1900 when a hurricane crossed through the Straits of Florida and looked like it would head up the east coast. The day before the storm hit Galveston the National Weather Service issued wind warning for the mid-Atlantic Coast thinking it would head that way.
Meanwhile, Cuban forecasters who were the pioneers in hurricane tracking kept telling the weather service that once the storm cleared Cuba it was going to hit Galveston. The Weather Service accused the Cubans of inciting panic and rather than listen to the Cubans their response was to cut the Western Union lines from the Cuban weather prognosticators. The American’s hubris cost Galvestonians when a low pressure trough over the Central U.S. drew the storm straight toward Galveston where it devestated the town and killed nearly 10,000 people who had no idea it was coming.
Pirate Attacks Hit Port A! For the first time in more than a century pirates attacked a boat in Lydia Ann Channel last weekend. The pirates came out of nowhere in mid-afternoon with a bright sun behind them for cover and attacked the Mustang as it took a group of unwary tourists on a Dolphin Watch Cruise and tour of the lighthouse. Witnesses say the pirates, one of whom looked suspiciously like Timmy from the Flats, appeared to be a sunburned and undernourished bunch of skallywags who began flinging buckets of water on the tourists demanding gimmi caps and Butterfinger Bars. T-Joe and the Mustang crew fired back with water blasters which the pirates didn’t see coming. One skallywag ended up in Davy Jone’s Locker trying to retrieve the Jolly Roger from the channel and, generally speaking, the desperados were said by the Mustang passengers to be the sorriest excuse for pirates since a man in a chicken suit tried to hijack the Port A ferry on New
Once that storm hooked up with the low pressure over Oklahoma it was rejuvenated and roared north continuing to baffle the Weather Service who predicted fair skies over Ohio as the storm blew through the state with hurricane force winds. It brought hurricane force winds to Chicago and Buffalo and sank a steam ship in Lake Michigan when no storm warnings were issued there. It downed enough telegraph lines in the Midwest and Northeast United States to bring commerce to a halt and delivered 65 mph winds to Manhattan.
The similarity to that heat wave/drought and the one now is uncanny. For a complete history of the 1900 storm pick up a copy of Erik Larson’s book Isaac’s Storm. It’s a great read. Topography
Another of the scary similarities between The Island and Galveston is how the 1900 storm struck the city in a perfect storm of wind direction and topography. The outer bands of the storm produced offshore winds from the north which blew the water from behind Galveston Island over it from the landward side. That water piled up against the incoming surge tide on the beach side of the island and as the hurricane approached it combined with the surge tide when the winds shifted to the east and inundated Galveston. A similar set of circumstances could occur here if the eye went just south of us and drew water from Nueces Bay. Eyewitnesses said the Back Bay went dry as Hurricane Celia approached in 1971 but the eye went over Ingleside north of Nueces bay so the counter-clockwise winds never blew the Gulf water inland south of the eye.
Two years earlier Hurricane Beulah went right up the Nueces River causing it to flow backwards and flood inland as far as Mathis. It is the outgoing water that causes much of the damage in hurricanes and where the water flows and how fast is determined mostly by topography and the direction a storm hits. That was the lesson learned by hurricane predictors in the Hurricane Rita in the eastern Gulf Galveston storm. The worst hit is from a storm that makes landfall at 90 degress because the storm surge hits all at once and is concentrated on a smaller It then sank six vessels off Saint-Pierre and drove forty-two fishing boats area of the coast than if the storm strikes a glancing blow. aground in the Strait of Belle Isle between Newfoundland and mainland CanInland damage ada. The storm literally cooled off America and effectively ended both the drought and the heatwave leaving frost in the Cascades, snow in Salt Lake Sometimes the damage is not confined to the coast. In 1979 tropical storm City and thirteen inches of snow in Wyoming. The storm then made a run across the top of the world before disappearing into the wilds of Siberia. Hurricane Continued on page B 4