Hurricane Carla 50 years ago
September 1961

In the scheme of then-current events, this was less than a month after the    
erection of the Berlin Wall and the ensuing crisis, a few weeks after the 2nd 
USSR orbital space flight (the US had done only 2 sub-orbital, May and July), 
and several weeks before the USSR detonated a massive 50-MT thermonuclear     
device (ending the moratorium on air tests since 1958 - and leading to the    
resumption of extensive US nuclear tests in the Pacific by April 1962).       
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Though San Antonio was far removed from the area of devastation it was my     
first near-brush with a hurricane coming the first weekend after school       
had begun (8th grade).  H. Carla had earlier passed thru the Yucatan Channel  
doing damage to Cuba (and in the political climate of the times, evoking      
scant sympathy - this was less than 5 months after the Bay of Pigs invasion). 

The import of the event was brought home on Saturday (Sep 9) morning when     
KONO-12 ran a half-hour PSA on "What To Do in a Hurricane" since "some of our 
viewers are in the danger zone" (there were no TV stations between Corpus     
Christi and Houston along the Texas Gulf Coast in those days).                

Sunday was largely spent watching the n-s outer cirrus bands trend across our 
skies (a sight not yet since really duplicated).  By evening the sky was now  
overcast and a brisk north wind was singing thru the utility lines.  A mass-  
exodus from the Texas coastal areas was descending on San Antonio with almost 
bumper-to-bumper traffic coming from the south and southeast arteries.  The   
landfall at night near Port O'Connor with 174-mph gusts could only be         
imagined!                                                                     

By Monday morning the weather had so deteoriated that my mother decided that  
I'd best not go to school (a well-founded choice since the local schools were 
dismissed at noon!)  Live TV shots were showing their gymnasiums filling up   
with refugees from the Coast (and the reappearance of weatherman Jerry        
Zimmerman on KENS-5, last seen in Mar 1958 when he left the KONO-12 weekend   
post for USAF duty in Alaska).  Aircraft at the numerous area military bases  
had been flown out to various other distant sites for their safety.           

That evening the strongest effects here began - periodic north wind gusts of  
c. 60-mph.  Out on our south-facing front porch after a minute or two one     
could observe the green flashing in the sky of compromised power lines to     
the south being affected by these gusts.  Our immediate area did not suffer   
any outages (though some dips).                                               

The eye of Carla remained east/northeast of us (though within c. 70 miles)    
so we were spared the risks of spinoff tornadoes (as well-experienced with H. 
Allen 1980 and H. Gilbert 1988 - each with its eye far down in the Rio Grande 
Valley).  By Tuesday (Sep 12) only some scattered showers remained while      
Carla's remnants later went to cause flooding as far away as Quebec!          

There were no remote satellite feeds 50 years ago to give live reports so we  
had to wait until any film from the affected areas arrived, was processed, and
then telecast.  Vivid images of WOAI-4's Harold Baker standing in Victoria    
while pieces of sheet-metal roofing zipped by in the background remain.  Radio
was resorted to for some of the more-on-sceen/near-live reports - notably     
KTRK 740 Houston (on the "bad" northeast quadrant of the storm) with things   
like the capsizing of a USCG ship that had been left in port/dock.  At the    
time I wasn't aware of which 40/80-m frequencies would have had nets.         
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Wikipedia

Victoria remembers