I do not need to remind anyone that 2008 was a busy year for named storms along the Texas coast and particularly for the upper-Texas coast. Two named storms made landfall within 75 miles of Galveston (Edouard and Ike) while anohter, Dolly, made landfall south of Corpus Christi. This gave Galveston essentially two direct hits (if you wish to define a hit as a storm making landfall within 75 miles of the Island) and the Texas coast three strikes during the season.

Both with an early eye to 2009 and with curiosity about how often this has occurred in the past, I did a little research on the topic. I was especially eager to learn about how often have we have had a season in which more than one tropical storm or hurricane made landfall close to Galveston and how often the Texas coast has been struck three or more times during a season.

First, how often has Galveston had two direct strikes in a season?

Going back to 1871, when the US Signal Corps set up the first weather office in Galveston, here is what we find. In the 138 hurricane seasons (1871 through 2008) there have been four years in which more than one tropical storm or hurricane has made landfall within 75 miles of Galveston. The first was 1871, when ironically, two tropical storms made landfall near Galveston in a week. The second was 1941, when a tropical storm and a hurricane made landfall near the Island. The third was 1989, when two hurricanes struck Galveston (Chantal and Jerry) and a tropical storm (Allison) came close enough to bring rough weather to the city. The fourth, was of course, 2008, when two named storms made landfall near here (Tropical Storm Edouard and Hurricane Ike). So, if we are to look at this statistically, it appears as though we can anticipate more than one strike in a season about 34 or 35 years. I can easily wait another three or four decades to see such a season!

Second, how often do we have hurricane seasons in which three or more tropical storms or hurricanes strike the Texas coast?

Again, going back to 1871, we find that only four seasons have seen 3 or more tropical storms or hurricanes hit the Texas coast during a season (1871, 1933, 1989 and 2008). So, again we are looking at a fairly rare phenomenum.

Now if we count seasons with two storms hitting the Texas coast, then the number rises quite a bit. In the 138 years of record, 15 seasons have seen two or more tropical storms or hurricanes make landfall somewhere on the Texas coast (1871,1888, 1909, 1921,1933, 1936, 1941, 1942, 1947, 1979, 1980, 1989, 2002, 2003, 2007.2008). However, and this is an important point, many of those were weak and had little impact. In fact, I'd be willing to wager that most of you cannot name many of the storms, even those that occurred in recent years.

So, what conclusions can we draw from this? The most obvious one is that 2008 was an unusual season indeed, even if we do not focus on the fact that Ike was so destructive. Second, is that busy seasons on the Texas coast do no automatically translate into destructive seasons either here or elsewhere on the Texas coast. If we look at some of the most destructive storms to ever strike the Texas coast (1900, 1909,1915, 1916, 1919, 1932, 1943, 1961, 1967.1970,1979,1983, 2001. 2005, 2008) you will find that the overwhelming majority did not occur during busy seasons. Third, we were doubly unlucky in 2008,. we had both a historically destructive storm and a very busy hurricane season on the Texas coast. I hoping that our luck will improve dramatically in 2009!!

Below is a graphic showing the tracks of the named storms in 2008 (Courtesy of NOAA):. Also, below that are links to the storm tracks during the seasons of 1871, 1933 and 1989):

http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/1871/index.html

http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/1933/index.html

http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/1989/index.html