A week after Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Gulf coast, the people of Texas are still reeling. They need food, water and shelter — not the news that another hurricane has formed in the Atlantic Ocean.
Yet Hurricane Irma is out there right now, growing in strength and tracking in a westward direction.
Can anyone blame the beleaguered people of Texas and Louisiana for asking, “Is this storm going to hit here?”
The short answer: Probably not.
With Irma days away from any possible landfall, the chances of that storm making its way into the Gulf of Mexico are very slim, CNN meteorologist Brandon Miller said Friday.
The East Coast faces a much greater threat from potential impacts from Hurricane Irma than those areas of Texas and Louisiana that were devastated by Harvey, he said.
Nobody knows where Irma will go, Miller stressed. The storm is probably five days from affecting the Bahamas and a week from impacting any part of the United States, he said.
But he cautions that there have been recent instances in which storms have packed a one-two punch.
The people of the Gulf Coast, for instance, still talk about how Rita came hard on the heels of Katrina.
August 29, 2005: Katrina made landfall in Louisiana after passing over south Florida and gaining power in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm topped the levees in New Orleans and flooded large parts of the city. When it was all over, Katrina had caused $108 billion in damages in several states and had a death toll of 1,833.
September 24, 2005: Hurricane Rita made landfall near the Texas-Louisiana border while the Katrina cleanup effort was just getting started in earnest. Flooding reoccurred in New Orleans. At least seven deaths were attributed to Rita and damages were estimated at $12 billion.
Let’s not forget about Florida in 2004, when four storms struck, including three hurricanes that moved across the central part of the Sunshine State. Though not as deadly as Katrina, the storms caused billions of dollars in damages and killed at least 40 people in the United States, plus many more in the Caribbean.
August 13, 2004: Hurricane Charley made landfall south of Fort Myers, on the west coast of the state, as a Category 4 storm.
September 5, 2004: Hurricane Frances made landfall near Stuart, on Florida’s east coast, as a Category 2 storm.
September 26, 2004: Hurricane Jeanne, a Category 4 storm, struck Florida near the spot where Frances made landfall 21 days earlier.
Adding to Florida’s misery in 2004 was Hurricane Ivan, which didn’t make landfall in the state, but struck just 10 miles west near Gulf Shores, Alabama.
Jeff Krauskopf, mayor of Stuart when the storm hit, said the city was suffering from hurricane fatigue, according to a CNN.com article from 2004.
“It just doesn’t stop,” he said. “It’s like that song, Frances to the left of me, Ivan to the right, and Jeanne, I’m stuck in the middle with you.”
Tornadoes have also come one after the other, Miller noted.
A devastating twister hit Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20, 2013, killing at least 24 people.
Eleven days later, reports reached the town of another approaching storm. Residents panicked and tried to drive away from danger, but only drove into the storm’s path, CNN affiliate WPTV reported.
At least eight people died that day.