Inside the Moon
Taste of the Island A2
POA Budget A5
Moon on a Spoon A6
The
Issue 602
Island Moon
The voice of The Island since 1996
October 29, 2015
Around The Island By Dale Rankin editor@islandmoon.com The good news is that the area Burn Ban was lifted last weekend; the bad news is it was replaced by Flood Warnings! As Islander Darryl pointed out last week, for reasons known only to a Higher Power it always rains on The Island on the last weekend of October.
The largest gathering of artists on Padre Island takes place this Sunday, November 1 when the Third Annual Island Art Walk kicks off at noon at Billish Park. Organizer JoAnn Smith says about one hundred local artists have signed up to display their original work and there is still time for more to sign up. The event is free to artists and the public alike and will run until 4 p.m. Kids and good dogs are welcome. If you would like to volunteer to help or show your art or craft or need more information, please call JoAnn Smith (361) 949-7114.
Tuesday, November 3
Water Exchange Bridge and Billish Park Up for Discussion
By Dale Rankin Our friend Snoopy Paul got the worst of it when his houseboat over on the Laguna took on water and went to the bottom during the storm and he lost, among other things, his beloved ukulele. He went to Snoopy’s for breakfast and when he came back his boat was on the bottom. But by Monday evening she was back afloat filled with waterlogged clothes and sundry other items. Paul who will turn 81 this year and hails from Des Moines where they don’t worry about high tides at first thought he lost everything but it turned out he didn’t; he lost possessions but not his friends and everything is above the waterline now except he is going to have to learn to play Ain’t Misbehavin’ on the kazoo and he has rechristened his boat the Titanic.
Abandoned boats Abandoned boats have been turning up in Island canals on a regular basis lately and the POA has spent $8000 this year to remove them. The issue of who is responsible for removing the stray boats is a tricky one with overlapping jurisdictions of the POA and the Texas General Land Office. Recently an unknown person or persons moved three abandoned boats from the canal system and deposited them along the Intracoastal Waterway on land owned by the GLO; a turn of events about which the GLO was not all that happy. The tricky part is to remove the boats without turning The Island into a dumping ground for unwanted flotsam and jetsam. If you see one call the POA office, not the GLO.
Street committee The nine-member street committee appointed by the Corpus Christi City Council on Tuesday has a definitive Island slant with five of the members having Island or Flour Bluff connections; former Austin City Manager Toby Futrell, Andy Taubman, and Darrell Scanlan are Island residents and members James Skrobarczyk and Kyle Pape are from Flour Bluff. They are charged with coming up with a plan to repair city streets, an undertaking which is expected to cost about $800 million. It looks like it may be another wet weekend for Trick or Treating so you might want to think about dressing as Groucho Marks and wear a raincoat…just a thought. We’ll be out rain or shine so say hello if you see us Around The Island.
Funding for the SPID/Park Road 22 Water Exchange Bridge will be front and center at the next meeting of the Island Strategic Action Committee at 5:30 on Tuesday, November 3. Funding for the estimated $10 million project has drawn attention in recent weeks as developer Paul Schexnailder has received a 404 permit from the Army Corps of Engineers office in Galveston which allows him to complete canals which would connect the existing Island canal system to Lake Padre, and on to the Packery Channel and the Gulf of Mexico as part of $552 million in planned development which stretches from the Laguna Madre to the Gulf beaches and would include a 3600foot long waterway bordered by residential, retail, and commercial development. As part of the plan the waterway from Packery Channel into Lake Padre would be widened from the current 50 feet to 85 feet.
Bridge continued on A4
POA Considers Potential Hurricane Damage
Sharkathon A11
Live Music A18
Free
Weekly
FREE
Free!Free!Free!
Annual Padre Island Art Walk Sunday
Moon Chair A9
By Dale Rankin
Photo by Miles Merwin
Water Water Everywhere!
It was a perfect storm that pushed high tides onto Island decks and over many Island roads. According to John Metz with the local office of the National Weather Service the triple whammy came in the form of a high pressure zone that entered the Eastern Gulf of Mexico area behind a cold front from the north which contained high winds and piled the water up in the Western portion of the Gulf for two weeks producing the two-foot tides along our shores. Then a low pressure event left over from the hurricane which hit the Mexican Pacific Coast added to the high water until a cool front arrived which produced northwest winds and in two days pushed water that had built up in the Laguna Madre and Corpus Christi Bay for two weeks out the only two Gulf passes in the course of one week. Evidence of that could be seen early this week as currents ripped out through the Aransas Pass and Packery Channel. Metz said high pressure fronts are common in the Coastal Bend in October but this one lasted longer than normal, and the northwest winds they produce serve to return area tides to normal. This witches brew of water-raising conditions pushed tides to the dune line from Port Aransas to PINS, where the beaches were closed, and up on Island bulkheads and over decks where some Islanders harvested shrimp flushed from their sandy lairs by the high-tide anomaly. As of this writing midweek tides are projected to remain above normal all week with an apex of a 2.5 foot high tide on Friday. But even the Full Moon won’t be able to match the high water of last weekend which was the highest on the Island since the passage of Hurricane Ike in 2008.
Snoopy's, Docs and Marker 37 were closed due to the water covered road.
Island decks were awash over the weekend. Photo by Sami Wilson.
Island heartbreak. Photo by Steve Coons
Water covered roads and forced the closing of the businesses along the Intracoastal Canal near the JFK Causeway and Gulf beaches in the City of Corpus Christi where water came up the access roads. The National Weather Service in Corpus Christi is predicting a very wet winter for South Texas because of weather conditions caused by El Niño but don’t expect tides like we saw this week since rain alone won’t get the job done.
Sandpiles on the north end of the seawall stopped the water just short of the concrete.
Here are some of the sights from around The Island this week.
The high water flushed out the snakes and Jake Warner skinned a rattler wandering around Port A.
The Texas Gulf Surfing Association held a contest at the seawall that was well attended.
By Dale Rankin If Hurricane Katrina had hit the Coastal Bend the rising ocean water would have inundated The Island and reached Weber Road; a Category 3 hurricane would put seven feet of water on The Island, and a Category 4 storm would push a thirteen-foot tide surge across The Island. Those were just some of the unsettling projections from John Metz, from the Corpus Christi office of the National Weather Service, who spoke to the Board of Directors of the Padre Isles Property Owners Association Tuesday evening. Metz was speaking to the board which is trying to work out a strategy for repairing the 32 miles of Island bulkheads in case of a hurricane strike. In general, Metz said, the Gulf side of The Island will take a higher tide in case of a storm strike than will the Laguna Madre side, but the shoreline along Corpus Christi Bay, because of the shallower water, will get a more destructive tidal surge than will The Island. He said that the 1919 Hurricane which destroyed downtown, a Category 4 storm by today’s standards, brought a 13-foot tidal surge to the Gulf beaches on The Island, 10.7 feet of water to the
Around continued on A3
Photo by Shrimp washed up on Island decks. Photo coutesty of Tiffany Michell.
The outgoing tide flushed the fish killed by Red Tide from the bay out the pass at Port Aransas Tuesday morning.
North Packery Monday morning.
A dead fish adorns the roadway leading to businesses along the Intracoastal Waterway. A $1.3 million city bond project to raise and repair the road has been delayed by high water.
Oh the Humanity!