After last hurricane season, predictions that the 2018 season will be slightly more active than usual could have a lot of Gulf Coast residents worried. In Corpus Christi, the free Storm Expo on Saturday, June 16, will help the region prepare for the six-month-long storm season, if not totally assuage everyone’s worries.
Held at the American Bank Center from 10 a.m.-3 p.m., the public event will provide information from recovery experts about emergency response. It promises to be a one-stop opportunity for information and services from government, nonprofits, and business experts. The expo is presented by the city of Corpus Christi and H-E-B.
Hurricane season begins June 1 and runs through the end of November. The strongest storms usually occur in August or September, as happened last year. Hurricane Harvey made landfall in the Coastal Bend on Aug. 25, ravaging much of Port Aransas and the Rockport-Fulton area before moving on to cause historic flooding in Houston and Southeast Texas.
This year’s forecasters at the Atmospheric Science Department at Colorado State University predict at least 14 named tropical storms. Of those, seven are expected to become hurricanes. Three of those could possibly reach Category 3 strength. The forecast includes a prediction of a 63 percent chance that at least one of the major hurricanes will hit the Gulf Coast again.
As this story was being written May 22, the National Hurricane Center was predicting a 40 percent chance of a tropical storm forming in the Gulf of Mexico that very weekend, a few days before the official beginning of the season.