b'H ey theres a storm in the gulf, my Padre Island surfer buddy chatted to me on Tuesday night, August 22 nd , a typically calm and humid evening on the island, with barely knee-high surf rippling at Bob Hall Pier.But after forty-seven years and two-and-a-half generations of Coastal Benders likethe coast of Africa, the ninth system of what would turn out to be the most active hur-me who have seen one storm after another go into Mexico, take a turn and head north,ricane season in the U.S. in over a decade. By August 17th, the four-day old system slide into the Valley, or otherwise just miss us, I gave it a humph like most of us didstrengthened into Tropical Storm Harvey and brought heavy rain, but little damage, to that fair summer Tuesday. Sure, a few folks started stocking water, batteries and cannedthe Lesser Antilles islands, where the Atlantic Ocean becomes the Caribbean Sea. By the food, and a few more headed to Home Depot for plywood, but the general demeanor was19th, Harvey had run into a wall of dry air and was downgraded to a tropical depression our standard, Im on island time. and then down to a tropical wave. In fact, the hurricane hunter plane could not positively Ten days earlier the National Hurricane Center began tracking a tropical wave offidentify a center of circulation (the eye) at all on the 19th.TheCooasastalBend.c THE COASTAL BEND MATHE CGAOZINEASTAL BEND MAFEATURED: The StGAZINEories that MattJanuary/February 2018ered 31TheC talBend.comom 41'