Mark sent me the mounted and matted photograph pictured below in December 2003, when I was living in Edmonds, Washington.
The day before the hurricane / © Mark Gresham / All rights reserved
Below the photograph, he wrote,
The day before the hurricane
Corpus Christi, Tex. 1983
and signed it with his first initial and last name. The same information is written on the back of the photograph. He also included the following note:
The black-and-white photo underlying the image was shot on Ilford 35 millimeter film at McGee Beach on Corpus Christi Bay. Here is another print from the same negative:
The day before the hurricane (black-and-white) / © Mark Gresham / All rights reserved
Mark used Marshall's Photo Pencil Set to color the photograph. Two books in his collection that he might have used for advice were Handcoloring Photographs by James McKinnis, and The official Marshall's handcoloring guide & gallery: The tools & techniques of handcoloring using Marshall's materials by Grace & George Schaub. Below is a photo of Mark's handcoloring supplies, which I still have. They include a set of Marshall's Photo Oils, which were mixed in the palette pictured, and applied with a variety of tools like retouching brushes, Q-tips, and toothpicks and skewers wrapped with cotton from cotton balls.
I sent Mark a Christmas card after receiving this, and in the letter I enclosed (he saved the card, letter, AND envelope), I asked if it was "from Hurricane Alicia...? I know that hit in Galveston around August 18. Or was it Barry that hit south of Brownsville 10 days later?"
I didn't get an answer, then or later, but I'm pretty sure it was Alicia, meaning the photograph was probably taken on August 17. Below is a photograph taken from the VISSR instrument onboard the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) GOES-5 satellite of Hurricane Alicia on August 17, 1983, at 6:30pm CDT (Central Daylight Time). At the time this image was captured, Alicia was a Category 2 hurricane with maximum sustained wind speeds of 110 mph. The lower left part of its outer bands are over the Corpus Christi area, accounting for the clouds in Mark's photograph, which was shot looking towards the northeast - where the hurricane was strengthening.
Hurricane Alicia on August 17, 1983, at 6:30pm CDT [cropped] / The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Alicia was the first hurricane to make landfall on the United States since Hurricane Allen struck South Texas in August 1980. Allen did a lot of damage in Corpus Christi, and Mark spent a lot of time dealing with FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) afterwards. So the city was pretty nervous about Alicia, as it developed rapidly from a tropical depression in the western Gulf of Mexico on August 15. Originally it was heading due west, straight at Corpus Christi. On August 16 at 11am CDT, a gale warning and hurricane watch was issued from Corpus Christi to Grand Isle, Louisiana.
By 8pm CDT that same day, Alicia had become a Category 1 hurricane, and a hurricane warning was issued from Corpus Christi to Morgan City, Louisiana. By this point, it had turned more clearly to the northwest towards Galveston. The eye of the storm, by then a Category 3, crossed Galveston Island about 25 miles southwest of the city at 2am CDT on August 18.
The hurricane warning for Corpus Christi was lifted at 11am that same day. Effects of the storm were minimal there (not so in Galveston, Houston, and surrounding areas). Highest sustained winds were measured at 16 mph on August 17 at 4:50pm CDT, with no peak gust recorded. No rain or flooding or tornadoes, no beach erosion, tides 1-2 feet on Gulf of Mexico beaches, "maybe one foot in the inland bays." In fact, the Corpus Christi Prelimenary [sic] and Final Report on Hurricane Alicia from the National Weather Service further stated that "on the 18th the circulation from Alicia brought in southwesterly winds and we had the hottest day in 5 years in Corpus Christi. It was 101 degrees." Corpus Christi did okay, compared to the report from the Galveston National Weather Service office.
It's possible Mark took this photograph with the approach of Hurricane Barry on August 28 - but I think that is unlikely. A gale warning and hurricane watch was issued for the coast between Brownsville and Port O'Connor (north of Corpus Christi), but a hurricane warning was not issued for the area north of Port Mansfield (which is south of Corpus Christi). The storm track stayed south, and a satellite image from the storm's peak intensity (Category 1) while making landfall in Northern Mexico on August 28 shows little cloud cover in the Corpus Christi area.
Mark's son Drew also has a handcolored copy of this image framed and hanging in his home.
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