Window replacement costs in Brownsville

Hurricane Hanna made landfall on Padre Island in July 2020, the first July hurricane to hit Texas since Dolly in 2008. Near Brownsville, one of its tornadoes struck the west side of the airport, blew out a dozen windows at a hangar and damaged the roofs of two homes in a neighborhood next to the airport. A gust of 55 knots was measured at Harlingen, and about 50,000 homes in Cameron County lost power, according to the hurricane center's storm report.

Dolly, twelve years earlier, came ashore at South Padre Island as a category 1. The Brownsville airport recorded a 59-knot gust, the surge reached up to 4 feet at the Port of Brownsville, and utility poles snapped across much of eastern and northern Cameron County. Damage inside the city was minor, mostly lost roofing.

Most of the housing is younger than the storm history. Close to 40 percent of the Brownsville-Harlingen metro's housing dates from 2000 on, and fewer than a third of its homes were standing in 1980, Census survey data show. A newer house still isn't storm-proof, though. Flying limbs and wind-driven rain don't check the year a house was built.