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Port OConnor mostly unaffected by Dolly

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  • Sonny Long •
  • Originally published July 24, 2008 at 12:17 a.m., updated July 24, 2008 at 12:17 a.m.

PORT O’CONNOR – “We needed the rain.”

That was Ed Wiatt’s laid-back reaction to the minimal effects of Hurricane Dolly in Port O’Connor.

“I planted these palm trees and have been watering them with city water. Now maybe Mother Nature will water them for me for a couple of days,” said Wiatt, proprietor of Coastal Ed’s Trading Post on the town’s main street.

Port O’Connor got some rain and some wind, but was otherwise unaffected by Dolly which made landfall more than 200 miles away in Brownsville.

For old-timers, dealing with Hurricane Dolly was ho-hum. For newer residents there was a little more stress involved.

Henry Anderson, a life-long Port O’Connor resident of more than 50 years, said Dolly was never a concern for him or his restaurant, Clark’s.

“We watched it and knew it wasn’t coming this way unless it turned,” Anderson said. “We try to give ourselves about 36 hours. That’s enough time to get into action. Now if it had been a huge storm, we would have had our shutters out and ready three to four days in advance. If we see a big one, we’re out of here.”

“We stayed here through Claudette. We boarded up some windows, but we stayed,” Anderson said of the 2003 storm.

Local fishing guide Michael Dean said there was little affect on his business.

“We went fishing," he said. “And they were biting.”

Lisa Grimm, working behind the counter at Coastal Ed’s selling coffee and ice cream, said she knew the residents weren’t worried when “nobody moved anything off their porches. I even saw some people swimming last night.”

For Lisa Stringo, who moved here in April and was dealing with a Gulf storm for the first time, watching Dolly develop was a little different.

“Two days ago I was a little scared,” she admitted. “We put some things in storage, bought some extra water and I did the laundry in case we needed to throw things in a suitcase and take off.”

Early Wednesday morning the water off Port O’Connor was choppy, the wind high, and rain fell intermittently at times heavy. At one point near noon, about the same time Dolly was making landfall, the sun actually poked through the clouds in places.

Sonny Long is a reporter for the Victoria Advocate. He can be reached at 361-580-6585, or by e-mail at slong@vicad.com.



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