What effect did Hurricane Ike have on the Texas coast?
The dunes that once lined the coast of Bolivar Peninsula are another thing that puts things into context. They were 1,500 to 2,000 years old, and Ike destroyed them overnight. And it’s not the first time such a thing has happened. Everything south of the highway on Bolivar is only 600 years old. What that tells us is that the peninsula was decapitated around 600 years ago, and it’s taken all this time to reform. People say, “The beach will recover,” and, yes, the beach does recover, but it doesn’t recover where it was. It recovers where it is now, and the dunes would recover, except there are houses sitting where dunes would develop. The same is happening on Galveston, where some fairly prominent dune ridges now are gone, replaced by miles and miles of real estate. That’s the end of those dunes. The U.S. Geological Survey reports an elevation loss of between three and 10 feet on Bolivar, leaving an average elevation of only three feet. That might make it vulnerable to even a strong tro
