Hi Sooner Al,
What serendipity to see this.
I spent much of my young(er) life all around where that South Padre Island Sentinel station now stands, and my youngest is a TAMU-CC alumni, where the CBI ( Conrad Blucher Institute) is also located (their building was under construction when she was a freshman).
If your first and second pictures in this post, with the taller dunes in the distance across the channel, are of the SPI station (and on viewing my gut said YES!), I have pics of my two oldest kids and my Hobie Cat on that xchannel shore. Used to fish and sail those waters a lot.
I've been looking all over online for info on that South Padre station, since seeing your (Sooner Al) post, not much available. I'll put some links below on what I found.
They sure don't seem to have gone into the TCOON or NOAA data ingests yet and showing up on the public net; curious since they have been in place for a few months now, still testing probably.
That SPI Sentinel WX pole is roughly at the base of the North Brazos Santiago jetty, just East of a small cove. Behind that cove there used to be a small "Sea World"-type park called Dolphin Cove (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_amusement_parks#United_States_of_America ). And behind that is what used to be called "Childrens Beach".
I have some neat pics of a wrecked shrimp boat taken not 1500' away from it that I've been meaning to scan in and digitize, guess I'll have to ASAP, and put it/them on this thread. The shrimpers used to founder all around there fairly often. But eating a few boxes of #6-16 size shrimp makes it all worthwhile (nothing like the storebought ones
)...
Links I found:
SPI Brazos Santiago, TX - Station ID: 8779749 (oops, your ref, look at the tabs, then get L/L ( 26° 4.1' N 97° 9.3' W ) and map it):
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/stationhome.html?id=8779749Installations Begin for “Sentinels of the Coast:
http://tamucc.edu/news/2014/10/102014%20Sentinels.html#.WHr-NC_555uhttp://cbiweb.tamucc.edu/GCOOS-Data-Provider-HighlightTCOON/http://cbiweb.tamucc.edu/STATIONS MAP & REAL-TIME DATA:
http://cbiweb.tamucc.edu/cbi/data/Not even listed here yet, TCOON obs queries:
http://lighthouse.tamucc.edu/pqGCOOS Data Portal:
http://data.gcoos.org/GCOOS Data Provider Highlight:
http://gcoos.tamu.edu/?p=7933Port Isabel-South Padre Press stories:
http://portisabelsouthpadre.com/2014/11/06/sentinel-of-the-coast-to-be-installed-on-island/http://portisabelsouthpadre.com/2014/11/20/spi-now-home-to-coastal-monitoring-sentinel-network/