Texans Evacuate, Gulf Coast Set To Score

With Hurricane Harvey expected to hit Texas as a Cat 3 storm late Friday or early Saturday, forecasters are calling for a messy weekend in coastal Texas, and possibly pumping long-period surf for much of the rest of the Gulf Coast.

According to Gulfster, “Groundswell should start filling in [around St. Petersburg and Sarasota] by this weekend. Tropical Storm Harvey is strengthening in the gulf this morning as he aims for Texas. Hopefully, he spares the state of any major destruction he’s quite a big storm and over a foot of rain is expected along the TX coast.”

Texas residents have been encouraged, in the strongest possible terms, to evacuate areas in Harvey’s predicted path.

With long-period groundswells like this, surfers from Gulf Shores to Naples will be pacing anxiously, doing laps to and from the local jetty sandbar, waiting for signs of the swell’s first limp pulses. After a summer flat spell often lasting from April through July, Harvey will be a welcomed respite, and surely if the storm intensifies as predicted – the low deepening and sustained winds remaining in the low-six-figures – we’ll see some of the best conditions the Gulf’s seen in some time.

The question remains: Will we see a sandbar like those in St. Petersburg/Clearwater’s years past?  

“This was taken up in Clearwater during Tropical Storm Debby, a few years back [2012]. It’s the same left that Cory [Lopez] surfs in one of the old ..Lost videos, just a lot bigger and better,” Ryan tells Stab. “The weather was horrendous, and I was shooting under an umbrella until it got too bad to shoot and then I went surfing.”