Just curious, because there have been several posts about the King Ranch being the best place for the storm to hit, but I do not know what the King Ranch is, or why it would be the best place.
Could you explain it to a northerner?
It's a ginormous Ranch - 825,000 acres.
http://www.king-ranch.com/
and here's a little tidbit from the King Ranch homepage:
It is a shorter drive between New York and Philadelphia; or Pittsburgh and Cleveland than it is from one end of the Ranch to the other.
History:
King Ranch was founded in 1853 after Captain Richard King traveled north from Brownsville to attend the Lone Star Fair in Corpus Christi. King’s route took him through the Wild Horse Desert where he encountered the Santa Gertrudis Creek, the first live water he had seen in 124 miles. The creek was an oasis shaded by large mesquite trees and offered protection from the sun as well as cool, sweet water to refresh the traveler.At the Fair, King and a friend of his, Texas Ranger Captain, Gideon K. "Legs" Lewis, formed a partnership to establish and operate a livestockoperation with its headquarters on this Creek.
The land the partnership purchased was the 15,500 acre Mexican land grant known as the Rincon de Santa Gertrudis. King’s first effort to set up a cow camp and tame the Wild Horse Desert was the beginning of a dream he would pursue the rest of his life. In the years since King’s death, King Ranch has been a bellwether of America’s ranching industry - the founder of two major American beef breeds, a producer of some of the all-time top running and performance horses, and a source of technology that has led to many significant advances in livestock and wildlife production and management. Because of this vision, King Ranch is generally recognized today as the birthplace of the American ranching industry. King Ranch continues to play a significant role as a leader in the multinational agricultural business world.
The King Ranch is the largest ranch in Texas, maybe in the US. It used to be the largest in the world. Miles of acreage with nothing but grass, scrub brush, and some tree breaks. Oh, and cattle. Cattle can usually take care of themselves in a storm as long as they don't have to swim out of a flood. They'll know this thing is coming by tomorrow, and they'll head up north away from the coast.
Look at a map of Texas. See the first bay along the coast up from the southern tip? The southern tip is Brownsville and Harlingen, otherwise known as the Valley. That first bay is Kingsville. And everything between is the King Ranch.
Any hurricane going in just north of Brownsville will strike an undeveloped Padre Island and an entire Texas county that is nothing but ranchland. Bret hit there in 1998, and is the only Cat 4 to hit the mainland US and not have its name retired, because all it did was knock down some ranch structures and kill some cattle.
The King Ranch Is Friggin' HUGE! It's big enough to swallow up a hurricane.