On This Date in Texas History, It’s Raining Snakes Throughout the State
Indiana Jones would have hated to be in Texas back in 1961.
Around this time of the year, our friends down south in the Texas Gulf Coast are keeping an eye out for hurricanes. The one that most recently caused the most damage was back in 2017, when Hurricane Harvey hit. However, today is the anniversary of a different hurricane striking Texas. Back in 1961, Hurricane Carla struck around a 600 mile stretch of Texas.
It's effects were felt as far north as Austin from the Texas Gulf. Texans dealt with 170 mph winds and flooding throughout the storms surge. Turns out, this was the first ever hurricane broadcasted live on television. Before he made it big, Dan Rather was actually broadcasting out of Galveston reporting the storm. You can actually see him talk about the experience in an interview below.
Once the storm had passed, the damage caused by Hurricane Carla was assessed. 34 people unfortunately passed away during the storm. However, the most reported injury during the whole ordeal, snake bites. Turns out, Hurricane Carla picked up thousands of water moccasins from The Gulf of Mexico. Dumping them all over the state.
The storm in total caused over 300 million dollars in damages to the state. Most of this was property damage, but about 100 million was lost revenue due to crops. By the way, this would be over two billion dollars worth of damages in today's economy. Now Carla technically officially struck Texas on September 11th. However the snake bites that I am talking about happened on this date and over the next week as people were recovering from the storm.