Warning Systems Down as Hurricane Season Nears
Texas Gulf Coast Vulnerable
Two warning systems vital to provide life-saving information to almost a million people in extremely vulnerable areas along the Gulf Coast are offline as hurricane season approaches, and the agency responsible for them has no idea when they will be restored.
The NOAA Weather Radio stations that broadcast warnings to the Texas cities of Galveston and Corpus Christi (and their surrounding residents) remain silent even though the 2025 Hurricane Season begins on June 1, 2025.
The Galveston NOAA Weather Radio Station was the latest to fail when a fire knocked its transmitter out of service in March. Galveston was the site of the deadliest natural disaster in US history, when a hurricane killed at least 6,000 people there on September 8, 1900.
The NOAA Weather Radio Station that remains off-air covers around 500,000 residents (these numbers are estimates & admittedly imprecise) of this vulnerable section of the Texas Gulf Coast. Although those citizens can also receive National Weather Service information from the internet and other sources, they are vulnerable to failure during severe weather events. NOAA Weather Radio can be a lifesaver for those with battery-powered radio receivers in their hurricane kits (handy when storms knock out electric service).
But Galveston's NOAA Weather Radio Station wasn't the first to go silent for hundreds of thousands of Texas Gulf Coast residents living in areas vulnerable to life-threatening hurricanes. Corpus Christi’s NOAA Weather Radio Station went dark in the middle of the last hurricane season (on October 3, 2024) and is still offline with the 2025 hurricane season now just days away.
It wasn't a fire, but unsafe conditions that forced the closure of a 1920s-era office tower in Downtown Corpus Christi that shut down the transmitter for NOAA Weather Radio Station KHB41, which sat atop the tower. That station has been silent for more than 19 months, during which time NOAA has been unable to relocate it to an adjacent rooftop location or a local broadcast tower.
Like Galveston, Corpus Christi is vulnerable to life-threatening hurricanes. A 1919 storm killed between 600 and 1,000 people there and washed away 23 square blocks of homes. Although a seawall has since been built to protect part of the city in the years since that killer storm, more houses and condos have been constructed on Padre Island and North Beach - neither of which is protected by the seawall.
More than 300,000 residents along the Coastal Bend of the Texas Gulf Coast should receive warnings and other potentially life-saving messages from Corpus Christi NOAA Weather Radio Station KHB41. Still, it appears they'll be without for a second hurricane season.
Should the Federal Government be doing more to restore these sources of emergency information as Hurricane Season is almost here?
Share your opinions in the comments on this article!
Abrazos,
Jack Beavers
Strangely not unlike the abandonment of FAA maintenance and improvement projects.
Not good