Hurricane Humberto

Hurricane Humberto unexpectedly strengthened into a weak category 1 hurricane before making landfall on the southeast Texas coast on 09/13/07. It only became a tropical depression during the day on 09/12/07, and by the evening news had become a tropical storm, but was expected to stay at about that strength before making landfall near Galveston. Instead it moved a little eastward before coming ashore, and strengthened around midnight of 09/12/07 into a hurricane, and made landfall at High Island, Texas about 2 AM on 09/13/07. People of High Island were taken by surprise, as the winds of more than 85 mph did significant damage. Everyone was taken by surprise. Unexpected damage was high enough over several counties, including Beaumont and Port Arthur, so that more than 100,000 people were without power for several days. Schools and universities were closed for that Thursday and Friday, but most people had power back by Monday. Rainfall in some places was more than 10 inches, but the system moved out rapidly. Humberto provided a good lesson: A tropical system still over water may strengthen after you go to bed. Or, as someone joked about the lyrics of a country song they might write about Humberto, "I went to bed with a tropical storm, but woke up with a hurricane."

The eye of Humberto passed exactly over the Jefferson County, Texas airport, site of the weather reporting station, KBPT. I made two animations, using the programming language Python and its imaging library called PIL. Both animations show hourly radar image frames with text and graphics posted over the radar image. One shows changing sea level pressure and the other changing wind direction. Read the comments on these pages and study the animations as they loop.