In 1919, the residents of Corpus Christi, Texas believed that their area was immune to hurricanes. With a high bluff and protective barrier island, the city was proclaimed in local newspapers to be “the only really safe place on the Texas coast.”
After a strong hurricane struck Corpus Christi TX in August 1916, but caused little damage and few fatalities, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times promulgated a myth by running a headline stating “Corpus Christi Defies Tropical Hurricane.”
During the week leading up to this Sunday morning, September 14, 1919, a major hurricane had crossed into the Gulf of Mexico near Key West, Florida and had been lost by weather forecasters. It would be the only hurricane of the 1919 Atlantic hurricane season.
World War I had just ended, and there were not many ships in the Gulf of Mexico to give weather reports. So residents along the Gulf Coast waited anxiously as the large hurricane pounded the entire Gulf Coast with heavy surf. Forecasters waited for the telltale fall of the barometer and the corresponding increase in winds. The signs finally came on Sunday morning, September 14th in Corpus Christi and hurricane warnings were frantically raised.
The hurricane made landfall about 25 miles south of Corpus Christi, placing the Texas coastal city in the dangerous right front semicircle of the Many residents in the North Beach area who had survived the fast-moving storm ignored warnings from police and the Weather Bureau to evacuate.
A total of 287 people died in the hurricane. A 16 foot storm surge inundated the low-lying areas of Corpus Christi, destroying almost all of the wooden buildings there. Port Aransas was nearly totally demolished. The Great Corpus Christi Hurricane of 1919 remains one of the most intense Texas hurricanes in history.
One of its survivors was a young man named Robert Simpson. He would go on to a distinguished career as Director of the National Hurricane Center. Simpson was co-founder of the Saffir-Simpson Scale which is used to classify hurricanes by intensity.
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