It's 508 now, and five years ago
today, Hurricane Harvey
made landfall in Texas.
The National Hurricane Center
thought at first Harvey would
just be a tropical storm or
maybe a category one hurricane.
By Friday evening, Harvey had
strengthened to a Cat 4 hurricane.
Around 10:00 PM, the eye of that
storm made landfall in Rockport
and our meteorologist Paul Morales was
in Port Lavaca when the storm hit,
giving us a glimpse of what
it was like at the time.
This morning he's back in Rockport
five years later to see how
the town has recovered.
And Paul, good morning to you.
How's it going out there?
Yeah, good morning. Do you like,
you like my background back here,
the harbor? Yeah, yeah.
Looks pretty good, right? Yeah.
You know, we drove into town yesterday.
I was really impressed that you
could hardly see any damage.
I mean, especially on the
main roads and everything.
It looks like Rockport has
really come back and they're
just such resilient people here,
and everybody I talked to just
had a great attitude and they're
looking forward to the future.
We did have a chance to talk to some folks,
and this is what they had to say.
You know, we're at the five
year mark of Hurricane Harvey.
The town is totally different.
I have a lot of friends that
stayed and some that moved away.
The people of the Rockport
Fulton area are rock solid.
We were the Ground Zero.
We were were the eye of the hurricane
hit hurricane force winds for 13 hours.
Right down the road about 2 miles is
where Hurricane Harvey came ashore.
Our building in August 25th,
2017 was completely destroyed.
There's still a lot of people,
believe it or not,
five years later that their homes
are still messed up from Harvey.
We were the recipient of so
many gifts of human kindness.
We have done about 100 repairs,
approximately 100 home repairs,
since Harvey hit.
Most terrifying night of my life.
Well, I was on the phone with him,
with him and my mom right
before the I hit and the roof
was peeling off the house and I
lost contact for 13 hours.
As though tornado with the
Lightning tornadoes, I thought,
I'm not going to make it.
And then eventually the eye passed
and one of my neighbors hit up at
the end of the street had stayed
and he came down with a flashlight.
Seeing if we were OK,
I'd like to thank. Families.
Several came down week after week helping us.
Yeah that gentleman Steven Culver
right there he rode out the storm in
his house most of the roof blew away.
He of course it's still troubling to
him five years later that night and
I can imagine it was just terrifying.
I rode out many of hurricane but
in usually in a big hotel I cannot
imagine in a just a small house what
that must have been like and he had
so many things to say and the I went
right over and he saw the stars and.
He said it was just a horrific night.
But I will tell you this the folks here
I keep hearing Rockport is rock solid.
It has come back amazingly and you know Ryan,
one of the reasons why some people
had to ride this out is they didn't
believe it was be as intense.
They'll never do it again.
But they didn't think it was going to be
as intense and it and intensified so rapidly.
They were kind of stuck.
I was going to say the same thing.
It entered the Caribbean as a tropical
wave pool and then into the Gulf
of Mexico it rapidly intensified.
It took advantage of the warm water and.
Let's take a look at this. Here's
the lifetime of Harvey,
and again in the Caribbean Sea.
Back in 2017, it wasn't much.
It was just a group of
showers and thunderstorms.
But when it entered the Gulf of Mexico,
that's where the warm water temperatures
above 80 to 85 degrees helped it
really rapidly intensify from a
tropical storm to a CAT1 cat two,
and then eventually making landfall in
Rockport as a category four hurricane,
major hurricane.
And then it backtracked.
It moved inland.
And then backtrack towards the
Gulf of Mexico where it dumped
upwards of 50 to 60 inches of
rainfall in Southeast Texas,
Western Louisiana near Houston and Beaumont.
It was crazy.
It was ridiculous to see because
of a short amount of time,
the hurricane and how strong it
was in a short amount of time.
So.